making presentations accessible

Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with disabilities

This topic gives you step-by-step instructions and best practices for making your PowerPoint presentations accessible and unlock your content to everyone, including people with disabilities.

PowerPoint has many features built-in that help people with different abilities to read and author presentations. In this topic, you learn, for example, how to work with the Accessibility Checker to tackle accessibility issues while you're creating your presentation. You'll also learn how to add alt texts to images so that people using screen readers are able to listen to what the image is all about. You can also read about how to use slide design, fonts, colors, and styles to maximize the inclusiveness of your slides before you share or present them to your audience.

In this topic

Best practices for making powerpoint presentations accessible.

Check accessibility while you work

Create accessible slides

Avoid using tables

Add alt text to visuals

Create accessible hyperlink text and add screentips, use accessible font format and color, use captions, subtitles, and alternative audio tracks in videos, save your presentation in a different format, test accessibility with a screen reader.

The following table includes key best practices for creating PowerPoint presentations that are accessible to people with disabilities.

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The Accessibility Checker is a tool that reviews your content and flags accessibility issues it comes across. It explains why each issue might be a potential problem for someone with a disability. The Accessibility Checker also suggests how you can resolve the issues that appear.

In PowerPoint, the Accessibility Checker runs automatically in the background when you're creating a presentation. If the Accessibility Checker detects accessibility issues, you will get a reminder in the status bar.

To manually launch the Accessibility Checker, select  Review  >  Check Accessibility . The  Accessibility  pane opens, and you can now review and fix accessibility issues. For more info, go to  Improve accessibility with the Accessibility Checker .

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The following procedures describe how to make the slides in your PowerPoint presentations accessible. For more info, go to Video: Create slides with an accessible reading order and Video: Design slides for people with dyslexia .

Use an accessible presentation template

Use one of the accessible PowerPoint templates to make sure that your slide design, colors, contrast, and fonts are accessible for all audiences. They are also designed so that screen readers can more easily read the slide content.

To find an accessible template, select File > New .

In the Search for Online templates and themes text field, type accessible templates and press Enter.

In the search results, select a suitable template.

In the template preview, select Create .

Give every slide a title

One simple step towards inclusivity is having a unique, descriptive title on each slide, even if it isn't visible. A person with a visual disability that uses a screen reader relies on the slide titles to know which slide is which.

Use the Accessibility ribbon to make sure every slide has a title. For instructions, go to  Title a slide  and expand the "Use the Accessibility ribbon to title a slide" section.

Hide a slide title

You can position a title off the slide. That way, the slide has a title for accessibility, but you save space on the slide for other content. For instructions, go to  Title a slide  and expand the "Put a title on a slide, but make the title invisible" section.

If you want all or many of your slide titles to be hidden, you can modify the slide master. For instructions, go to  Title a slide  and expand the "Systematically hide slide titles" section.

Restore a slide design

If you've moved or edited a placeholder on a slide, you can reset the slide to its original design. All formatting (for example, fonts, colors, effects) go back to what has been assigned in the template. Restoring the design might also help you find title placeholders which need a unique title.

To restore all placeholders for the selected slide, on the Home tab, in the Slides group, select Reset .

Set the reading order of slide contents

Some people with visual disabilities use a screen reader to read the information on the slide. When you create slides, putting the objects in a logical reading order is crucial for screen reader users to understand the slide. 

Use the Accessibility Checker and the Reading Order pane to set the order in which the screen readers read the slide contents. When the screen reader reads the slide, it reads the objects in the order they are listed in the Reading Order pane. 

For the step-by-step instructions how to set the reading order, go to  Make slides easier to read by using the Reading Order pane .

Use built-in slide designs for inclusive reading order, colors, and more

PowerPoint has built-in, predesigned slide designs that contain placeholders for text, videos, pictures, and more. They also contain all the formatting, such as theme colors, fonts, and effects. To make sure that your slides are accessible, the built-in layouts are designed so that the reading order is the same for people who use assistive technologies such as screen readers and people who see. For more info, go to Video: Use accessible colors and styles in slides .

On the View tab, select  Normal .

On the Design tab, do one or both of the following:

Expand the Themes gallery and select the slide layout that you want. PowerPoint automatically applies this layout to the presentation.

Select Design Ideas  and select one of the predesigned designs.

In general, avoid tables if possible and present the data another way, like paragraphs with headings. Tables with fixed width might prove difficult to read for people who use Magnifier, because such tables force the content to a specific size. This makes the font very small, which forces Magnifier users to scroll horizontally, especially on mobile devices.

If you have to use tables, use the following guidelines to make sure your table is as accessible as possible:

Avoid fixed width tables.

Make sure the tables render properly on all devices, including phones and tablets.

If you have hyperlinks in your table, edit the link texts, so they make sense and don't break mid-sentence.

Make sure the slide content is easily read with Magnifier. View it on a mobile device to make sure people won’t need to horizontally scroll the slide on a phone, for example.

Use table headers.

Test accessibility with Immersive Reader.

Use table headers

Screen readers keep track of their location in a table by counting table cells. If a table is nested within another table or if a cell is merged or split, the screen reader loses count and can’t provide helpful information about the table after that point. Blank cells in a table could also mislead someone using a screen reader into thinking that there is nothing more in the table. Use a simple table structure for data only and specify column header information. Screen readers also use header information to identify rows and columns.

To ensure that tables don't contain split cells, merged cells, or nested tables, use the  Accessibility Checker .

Place the cursor anywhere in a table.

On the  Table Design  tab, in the  Table Styles Options group, select the  Header Row  checkbox.

Type your column headings.

Alt text helps people who use screen readers to understand what’s important in the visuals in your slides. Visual content includes pictures, SmartArt graphics, shapes, groups, charts, embedded objects, ink, and videos.

In alt text, briefly describe the image, its intent, and what is important about the image. Screen readers read the description to users who can’t see the content.

Tip:  To write a good alt text, make sure to convey the content and the purpose of the image in a concise and unambiguous manner. The alt text shouldn’t be longer than a short sentence or two—most of the time a few thoughtfully selected words will do. Do not repeat the surrounding textual content as alt text or use phrases referring to images, such as, "a graphic of" or "an image of." For more info on how to write alt text, go to  Everything you need to know to write effective alt text .

Avoid using text in images as the sole method of conveying important information. If you use images with text in them, repeat the text in the slide. In alt text of such images, mention the existence of the text and its intent. 

PowerPoint for PC in Microsoft 365 automatically generates alt texts for photos, stock images, and the PowerPoint icons by using intelligent services in the cloud. Always check the autogenerated alt texts to make sure they convey the right message. If necessary, edit the text. For charts, SmartArt, screenshots, or shapes, you need to add the alt texts manually.

For the step-by-step instructions on how to add or edit alt text, go to  Add alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, SmartArt graphic, or other object  and Video: Improve image accessibility in PowerPoint .

In the Alt Text pane, spelling errors are marked with a red squiggly line under the word. To correct the spelling, right-click the word and select from the suggested alternatives.

In the Alt Text pane, you can also select Generate a description for me to have Microsoft cloud-powered intelligent services create a description for you. You see the result in the alt text field. Remember to delete any comments PowerPoint added there, for example, "Description automatically generated."

To find missing alternative text, use the Accessibility Checker.

Note:  For audio and video content, in addition to alt text, include closed captioning for people who are deaf or have limited hearing.

People who use screen readers sometimes scan a list of links. Links should convey clear and accurate information about the destination. For example, avoid using link texts such as "Click here," "See this page," "Go here," or "Learn more." Instead include the full title of the destination page. You can also add ScreenTips that appear when your cursor hovers over text or images that include a hyperlink.

Tip:   If the title on the hyperlink's destination page gives an accurate summary of what’s on the page, use it for the hyperlink text. For example, this hyperlink text matches the title on the destination page:  Create more with Microsoft templates .

For the step-by-step instructions on how to create hyperlinks and ScreenTips, go to Add a hyperlink to a slide .

An accessible font doesn't exclude or slow down the reading speed of anyone reading a slide, including people with low vision or reading disability or people who are blind. The right font improves the legibility and readability of the text in the presentation.

For the step-by-step instructions on how to change fonts in PowerPoint go to Change the fonts in a presentation or  Change the default font in PowerPoint .

Use accessible font format

To reduce the reading load, select familiar sans serif fonts such as Arial or Calibri. Avoid using all capital letters and excessive italics or underlines.

A person with a vision disability might miss out on the meaning conveyed by particular colors. For example, add an underline to color-coded hyperlink text so that people who are colorblind know that the text is linked even if they can’t see the color. For headings, consider adding bold or using a larger font.

Use accessible font color

Here are some ideas to consider:

The text in your presentation should be readable in a high contrast mode. For example, use bright colors or high-contrast color schemes on opposite ends of the color spectrum. White and black schemes make it easier for people who are colorblind to distinguish text and shapes.

Use the predesigned Office Themes to make sure that your slide design is accessible. For instructions, go to  Use an accessible presentation template  or  Use built-in slide designs for inclusive reading order, colors, and more .

Use the Accessibility Checker to analyze the presentation and find insufficient color contrast. It finds insufficient color contrast in text with or without highlights or hyperlinks in shapes, tables, or SmartArt with solid opaque colors. It does not find insufficient color contrast in other cases such as text in a transparent text box or placeholder on top of the slide background, or color contrast issues in non-textual content.

PowerPoint supports the playback of video with multiple audio tracks. It also supports closed captions and subtitles that are embedded in video files.

Currently, only PowerPoint for Windows supports insertion and playback of closed captions or subtitles that are stored in files separate from the video. For all other editions of PowerPoint (such as PowerPoint for macOS or the mobile editions), closed captions or subtitles must be encoded into the video before they are inserted into PowerPoint.

Supported video formats for captions and subtitles vary depending on the operating system that you're using. Each operating system has settings to adjust how the closed captions or subtitles are displayed. For more information, go to Closed Caption file types supported by PowerPoint .

Closed captions, subtitles, and alternative audio tracks are not preserved when you use the Compress Media or Optimize Media Compatibility features. Also, when turning your presentation into a video , closed captions, subtitles, or alternative audio tracks in the embedded videos are not included in the video that is saved.

When you use the Save Media as command on a selected video, closed captions, subtitles, and multiple audio tracks embedded in the video are preserved in the video file that is saved.

To make your PowerPoint presentations with videos accessible, ensure the following:

Videos include an audio track with video descriptions, if needed, for users who are blind or have low vision.

Videos that include dialogue also include closed captions, in-band closed captions, open captions, or subtitles in a supported format for users that are deaf or hard-of-hearing.

For more information, refer to  Add closed captions or subtitles to media in PowerPoint . 

You can save your presentation in a format that can be easily read by a screen reader or be ported to a Braille reader. For instructions, go to  Video: Save a presentation in a different format or  Create accessible PDFs . Before converting a presentation into another format, make sure you run the Accessibility Checker and fix all reported issues.

When your presentation is ready and you've run the Accessibility Checker to make sure it is inclusive, you can try navigating the slides using a screen reader, for example, Narrator. Narrator comes with Windows, so there's no need to install anything. This is one additional way to spot issues in the navigation order, for example.

Start the screen reader. For example, to start Narrator, press Ctrl+Windows logo key+Enter.

Press F6 until the focus, the blue rectangle, is on the slide content area.

Press the Tab key to navigate the elements within the slide and fix the navigation order if needed. To move the focus away from the slide content, press Esc or F6.

Exit the screen reader. For example, to exit Narrator, press Ctrl+Windows logo key+Enter.

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Closed Caption file types supported by PowerPoint

Use built-in slide designs for inclusive reading order, colors, and more

Use accessible hyperlink texts and screentips.

Use accessible text alignment and spacing

Create accessible lists

Test the accessibility of your slides with a screen reader.

The Accessibility Checker is a tool that reviews your content and flags accessibility issues it comes across. It explains why each issue might be a potential problem for someone with a disability. The Accessibility Checker also suggests how you can resolve the issues that appear.

PowerPoint has built-in slide designs that contain placeholders for text, videos, pictures, and more. They also contain all the formatting, such as theme colors, fonts, and effects. To make sure that your slides are accessible, the built-in layouts are designed so that the reading order is the same for people who see and people who use technology such as screen readers.

Tip:  For more info on what to consider when you're creating slides for people with dyslexia, go to  Design slides for people with dyslexia .

The themes gallery for selecting an accessible layout in PowerPoint for Mac.

To find an accessible template, select File > New from Template .

In the Search  text field, type accessible templates , and then press Return.

Off-white backgrounds are better for people with perceptual disabilities, like dyslexia.

Select templates and themes with sans serif fonts that are 18 points or larger.

Look for solid backgrounds with contrasting text color.

Use the  Accessibility  ribbon to make sure every slide has a title. For the step-by-step instructions, go to  Title a slide  and expand the "Use the Accessibility ribbon to title a slide" section.

Tip:  If you've moved or edited a placeholder on a slide, you can reset the slide to its original design. All formatting (for example, fonts, colors, effects) go back to what has been assigned in the template. Restoring the original design might also help you find title placeholders which need a unique title. To restore all placeholders for the selected slide, on the Home tab, select Reset .

You can position a title off the slide. That way, the slide has a title for accessibility, but you save space on the slide for other content. For the step-by-step instructions, go to  Title a slide  and expand the "Put a title on a slide, but make the title invisible" section.

If you want all or many of your slide titles to be hidden, you can modify the slide master. For the step-by-step instructions, go to  Title a slide  and expand the "Systematically hide slide titles" section.

When someone who can see reads a slide, they usually read things, such as text or a picture, in the order the elements appear on the slide. In contrast, a screen reader reads the elements on a slide in the order they were added to the slide, which might be very different from the order in which things appear.

Use the Selection Pane to set the order in which screen readers read the slide contents. Screen readers read the objects in the reverse of the order they are listed in the Selection Pane .

To find slides with a problematic reading order, use the Accessibility Checker .

On the Home tab, select Arrange .

In the Arrange menu, select Selection Pane .

In the Selection Pane , to change the reading order, drag and drop items to the new location.

Avoid using tables 

In general, avoid tables if possible and present the data another way, like paragraphs with headings. Tables with fixed width might prove difficult to read for people who use magnifying features or apps, because such tables force the content to a specific size. This makes the font very small, which forces magnifier users to scroll horizontally, especially on mobile devices.

Make sure the slide content is easily read with magnifying features, such as Zoom . View it on a mobile device to make sure people won’t need to horizontally scroll the slide on a phone, for example.

Use table headers .

Test the accessibility of your slides with a screen reader .

If you do need to use tables, add headers to your table to help screen readers keep track of the columns and rows. If a table is nested within another table or if a cell is merged or split, the screen reader loses count and can’t provide helpful information about the table after that point. Blank cells in a table could also mislead someone using a screen reader into thinking that there is nothing more in the table. Screen readers also use header information to identify rows and columns. 

Header Row checkbox selected on the Table Design tab in PowerPoint for Mac.

Type the column headers.

Avoid using text in images as the sole method of conveying important information. If you use images with text in them, repeat the text in the slide. In alt text of such images, mention the existence of the text and its intent.

For the step-by-step instructions on how to add or edit alt text, go to  Add alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, SmartArt graphic, or other object .

For audio and video content, in addition to alt text, include closed captioning for people who are deaf or have limited hearing.

In the  Alt Text  pane, spelling errors are marked with a red squiggly line under the word. To correct the spelling, select and right-click the word, and then select an option from the suggested alternatives.

In the  Alt Text  pane, you can also select  Generate a description for me  to have Microsoft cloud-powered intelligent services create a description for you. You'll see the result in the alt text field. Remember to delete any comments PowerPoint added there, for example, "Description automatically generated."

To find missing alternative text, use the  Accessibility Checker .

People who use screen readers sometimes scan a list of links. Links should convey clear and accurate information about the destination. For example, avoid using link texts such as "Click here," "See this page," "Go here," or "Learn more." Instead include the full title of the destination page. You can also add ScreenTips that appear when your cursor hovers over text or images that include a hyperlink. 

Tip:  If the title on the hyperlink's destination page gives an accurate summary of what’s on the page, use it for the hyperlink text. For example, this hyperlink text matches the title on the destination page: Create more with Microsoft templates .

For the step-by-step instructions on how to create hyperlinks, go to  Add a hyperlink to a slide . 

Use accessible font format and color

For the step-by-step instructions on how to change fonts in PowerPoint, go to  Change the fonts in a presentation . 

Use the predesigned themes to make sure that your slide design is accessible. For instructions, go to  Use an accessible presentation template  or  Use built-in slide designs for inclusive reading order, colors, and more .

Use the Accessibility Checker to analyze the presentation and find insufficient color contrast. It finds insufficient color contrast in text with or without highlights or hyperlinks in shapes, tables, or SmartArt with solid opaque colors. It does not find insufficient color contrast in other cases such as text in a transparent text box or placeholder on top of the slide background, or color contrast issues in non-textual content.

Use accessible text alignment and spacing 

People with dyslexia perceive text in a way that can make it difficult to distinguish letters and words. For example, they might perceive a line of text compressing into the line below, or adjacent letters seeming to merge. Also, having multiple blank lines or consecutive spaces can make keyboard navigation slow and screen reader usage more cumbersome.

Align your paragraph to the left to avoid uneven gaps between words, and increase or decrease the white space between lines to improve readability. Include sufficient white space between lines and paragraphs but avoid more than two spaces between words and two blank lines between paragraphs.

Select the piece of text you want to modify.

The Align Left button on the ribbon in PowerPoint for Mac.

To make it easier for screen readers to read your slides, organize the information into small chunks such as bulleted or numbered lists.

Design lists so that you do not need to add a plain paragraph without a bullet or number to the middle of a list. If your list is broken up by a plain paragraph, some screen readers might announce the number of list items wrong. Also, the user might hear in the middle of the list that they are leaving the list.

Place the cursor where you want to create a list.

The Bullets button on the ribbon in PowerPoint for Mac.

Type the text you want for each bullet or numbered item in the list.

Closed captions or subtitles must be encoded into the video before it is inserted into PowerPoint. PowerPoint does not support closed captions or subtitles that are stored in a separate file from the video file.

Supported video formats for captions and subtitles vary depending on the operating system that you're using. Each operating system has settings to adjust how the closed captions or subtitles are displayed. For more information, go to  Closed Caption file types supported by PowerPoint.

Closed captions, subtitles, and alternative audio tracks are not preserved when you use the Compress Media or Optimize Media Compatibility features. To learn more about optimizing media for compatibility, go to the section "Optimize media in your presentation for compatibility" in  Are you having video or audio playback issues?  Also, when turning your presentation into a video , closed captions, subtitles, or alternative audio tracks in the embedded videos are not included in the video that is saved.

When you use the Save Media as command on a selected video, closed captions, subtitles, and multiple audio tracks embedded in the video are preserved in the video file that is saved. For more info, go to  Save embedded media from a presentation (audio or video) .

Videos include an audio track with video descriptions, if needed, for users that are blind or have low vision.

Videos that include dialogue also include closed captions, in-band closed captions, open captions, or subtitles in a supported format for users that are deaf or hard-of-hearing.

When your presentation is ready and you've run the Accessibility Checker to make sure it is inclusive, you can try navigating the slides using a screen reader, for example, VoiceOver. VoiceOver comes with macOS, so there's no need to install anything. This is one additional way to spot issues in the navigation order, for example.

Start the screen reader. For example, to start VoiceOver, press Command+F5.

Press F6 until the focus, the black rectangle, is on the slide content area.

Exit the screen reader. For example, to exit VoiceOver, press Command+F5.

Best practices for making PowerPoint presentations accessible

Use accessible hyperlink texts

Use accessible text format and color

Test the accessibility of your slides

PowerPoint has built-in, predesigned slide designs that contain placeholders for text, videos, pictures, and more. They also contain all the formatting, such as theme colors, fonts, and effects. To make sure that your slides are accessible, the built-in layouts are designed so that the reading order is the same for people who use assistive technologies such as screen readers and people who see.

making presentations accessible

Select  Home > Design .

Select  Themes , and then select the theme you want.

Themes menu in PowerPoint for iOS.

One simple step towards inclusivity is having a unique, descriptive title on each slide, even if it isn't visible. A person with a visual disability that uses a screen reader relies on the slide titles to know which slide is which. With descriptive titles on each slide, everyone can quickly scan through a list of slide titles and go right to the slide they want.

On a slide, select the title placeholder, and then type the title.

Go through each slide in your presentation to make sure they all have titles.

Hide a slide title 

You can position a title off the slide. That way, the slide has a title for accessibility, but you save space on the slide for other content.

On a slide, tap and hold the title element.

Drag the title element outside the slide boundary and then lift your finger off the screen to drop the element off the slide.

An example of a title placeholder placed outside slide border in PowerPoint for iOS.

Test the accessibility of your slides .

Screen readers keep track of their location in a table by counting table cells. If a table is nested within another table or if a cell is merged or split, the screen reader loses count and can’t provide helpful information about the table after that point. Blank cells in a table could also mislead someone using a screen reader into thinking that there is nothing more in the table. Use a simple table structure for data only and specify column header information. Screen readers also use header information to identify rows and columns. 

Select  Style Options and then select Header Row .

In your table, type the column headings.

Table header menu in PowerPoint for iOS.

Select the visual, for example, an image.

Select  Alt Text , and then type a description for the visual.

The Alt Text dialog box in PowerPoint for iOS.

Mark visuals as decorative

If your visuals are purely decorative and add visual interest but aren't informative, you can mark them as such without needing to write any alt text. Examples of objects that should be marked as decorative are stylistic borders. People using screen readers will hear that these objects are decorative, so they know they aren’t missing any important information. 

Select the visual, for example, a picture or chart.

Select Alt Text .

Turn on the Mark as decorative switch, and then select Done .

The Mark as decorative option selected in the Alt Text dialog box in PowerPoint for iOS.

Use accessible hyperlink texts 

People who use screen readers sometimes scan a list of links. Links should convey clear and accurate information about the destination. For example, avoid using link texts such as "Click here," "See this page," "Go here," or "Learn more." Instead include the full title of the destination page.

Tip:  If the title on the hyperlink's destination page gives an accurate summary of what’s on the page, use it for the hyperlink text. For example, this hyperlink text matches the title on the destination page:  Create more with Microsoft templates .

Select the piece of text you want to turn into a hyperlink. The context menu opens.

In the context menu, select Link . The Insert Hyperlink dialog box opens.

Type or paste the hyperlink URL to the ADDRESS text field.

If you want to change the hyperlink text, modify the text in the DISPLAY text field.

Use accessible text format and color

An accessible font doesn't exclude or slow down the reading speed of anyone reading a slide, including people with low vision or reading disability or people who are blind. The right font improves the legibility and readability of the text in the presentation. 

Use accessible text format 

Select the piece of text you want to format.

On the Home tab, select the current font type to open the font menu, and then select the font type you want or adjust the font size to your liking.

Use accessible text color

Use the predesigned Themes  to make sure that your slide design is accessible. For instructions, go to  Use built-in slide designs for inclusive reading order, colors, and more .

On the Home tab, select Font Color , and then pick the font color you want.

Select the text you want to modify.

The Align left button in PowerPoint for iOS.

Create accessible lists 

Design lists so that you do not need to add a plain paragraph without a bullet or number to the middle of a list. If your list is broken up by a plain paragraph, some screen readers might announce the number of list items wrong. Also, the user might hear in the middle of the list that they are leaving the list. 

On a slide, place the cursor where you want to create a list.

On the Home tab, select Bullets or Numbering , and then select the bullet or numbering style you want.

Type the first bulleted or numbered item in the list, and then select return on the on-screen keyboard. A new list item is added. Repeat this step for each list item you want to add.

When your slides are ready, you can try a few things to make sure they are accessible:

Switch to the full desktop or web version of PowerPoint, and then run the Accessibility Checker. The Accessibility Checker is a tool that reviews your content and flags accessibility issues it comes across. It explains why each issue might be a potential problem for someone with a disability. The Accessibility Checker also suggests how you can resolve the issues that appear. For instructions, go to  Improve accessibility with the Accessibility Checker .

In the PowerPoint for iOS app, you can try navigating the slides using the built-in screen reader, VoiceOver. VoiceOver comes with iOS, so there's no need to install anything. This is one additional way to spot issues in the navigation order, for example.

To turn on VoiceOver, do one of the following:

In your device settings, select  Accessibility  >  VoiceOver , and then turn on the  VoiceOver  switch.

Press the power button of your device three times.

To navigate the content in the slide, swipe left or right. Modify the reading order of the elements on the slides if necessary.

Tip:  To select an item in focus when VoiceOver is on, double-tap the screen.

To turn off VoiceOver, do one of the following:

In your device settings, select  Accessibility  >  VoiceOver , and then turn off the  VoiceOver  switch.

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PowerPoint has built-in, predesigned slide designs that contain placeholders for text, videos, pictures, and more. They also contain all the formatting, such as theme colors, fonts, and effects. To make sure that your slides are accessible, the built-in layouts are designed so that the reading order is the same for people who use assistive technologies such as screen readers and people who see. 

The Themes menu in PowerPoint for Android.

Give every slide a title 

One simple step towards inclusivity is having a unique, descriptive title on each slide, even if it isn't visible. A person with a visual disability that uses a screen reader relies on the slide titles to know which slide is which. With descriptive titles on each slide, everyone can quickly scan through a list of slide titles and go right to the slide they want. 

An example of a title placeholder positioned outside the slide borders in PowerPoint for Android.

Select  Style Options , and then select Header Row .

In the table, type the column headings.

The Header Row checkbox selected in the Style Options menu in PowerPoint for Android.

On a slide, select a visual.

The Alt Text dialog box in PowerPoint for Android.

Select the visual.

Select  Alt Text .

Select the Mark as decorative checkbox.

The Alt Text dialog box showing the Mark as decorative checkbox selected in PowerPoint for Android.

Select the piece of text you want to turn into a hyperlink.

Select Home > Insert > Link .

Do one of the following:

To insert a hyperlink to a web page, select Insert Link . Type or paste the hyperlink URL to the  Address text field. If you want to change the hyperlink text, modify the text in the  Text to display text field.

To insert a link to a recent document, browse the Recent Items list until you find the one you want, and then select it.

On the  Home  tab, you can do, for example, the following:

To change the font type, select the current font type to open the Font menu, and then select the font type you want.

To adjust the font size, select the current font size, and then select the new font size.

Font menu in PowerPoint for Android.

Use the predesigned  Themes  to make sure that your slide design is accessible. For the step-by-step instructions, go to  Use built-in slide designs for inclusive reading order, colors, and more .

On the  Home  tab, expand the  Font Color menu, and then pick the color you want.

The Align left button in PowerPoint for Android.

On the  Home  tab, select  Bullets  or  Numbering , and then select the bullet or numbering style you want.

The Enter button on the Android on-screen keyboard.

Test the accessibility of your slides 

In the PowerPoint for Android app, you can try navigating the slides using the built-in screen reader, TalkBack. TalkBack comes with Android, so there's no need to install anything. This is one additional way to spot issues in the navigation order, for example.

To turn on TalkBack, do one of the following:

In your device settings, select  Accessibility  >  TalkBack , and then turn on the  Use service  switch.

Press and hold the volume keys of your device until the device vibrates.

Tip:  To select an item in focus when TalkBack is on, double-tap the screen.

To turn off TalkBack, do one of the following:

In your device settings, select  Accessibility  >  TalkBack , and then turn off the  Use service  switch.

Best practices for making PowerPoint for the web presentations accessible

Add alt text to visuals and tables.

The following table includes key best practices for creating PowerPoint for the web presentations that are accessible to people with disabilities.

Check accessibility while you work 

To manually launch the Accessibility Checker, select  Review  >  Check Accessibility . The  Accessibility  pane opens, and you can now review and fix accessibility issues. For more info, go to  Improve accessibility with the Accessibility Checker .

PowerPoint for the web has built-in slide designs that contain placeholders for text, videos, pictures, and more. They also contain all the formatting, such as theme colors, fonts, and effects. To make sure that your slides are accessible, the built-in layouts are designed so that the reading order is the same for people who see and people who use technology such as screen readers.

Tip:   For more info on what to consider when you're creating slides for people with dyslexia, go to  Design slides for people with dyslexia .

The Themes menu expanded in PowerPoint for the web.

In your browser, go to Accessible PowerPoint template sampler .

On the Accessible PowerPoint template sampler  page, select Download . The template sampler is downloaded to your device.

Open the sampler in the full desktop version of PowerPoint, select a suitable slide design, and save it.

Open PowerPoint for the web in your browser, open the selected design, and create your presentation.

Use the  Accessibility  ribbon to make sure every slide has a title. For the step-by-step instructions, go to the section "Use the Accessibility ribbon to title a slide" in  Title a slide .

You can position a title off the slide. That way, the slide has a title for accessibility, but you save space on the slide for other content. For the step-by-step instructions, go to the section "Put a title on a slide, but make the title invisible" in  Title a slide .

Use an accessible reading order for the slide contents

Use the  Selection Pane  to set the order in which screen readers read the slide contents. Screen readers read the objects in the reverse of the order they are listed in the  Selection Pane .

To find slides with a problematic reading order, use the  Accessibility Checker .

On the Home tab, select Arrange > Selection Pane .

The Selection Pane for arranging objects in a slide in PowerPoint for the web.

If you do need to use tables, add headers to your table to help screen readers keep track of the columns and rows. If a table is nested within another table or if a cell is merged or split, the screen reader loses count and can’t provide helpful information about the table after that point. Blank cells in a table could also mislead someone using a screen reader into thinking that there is nothing more in the table. Screen readers also use header information to identify rows and columns.

Select Table Design .

The Header Row button selected in PowerPoint for the web.

In the alt text description field, spelling errors are marked with a red squiggly line under the word.

In the visual's Alt Text  pane, you can also select  Generate a description for me  to have Microsoft cloud-powered intelligent services create a description for you. You'll see the result in the alt text field. Remember to delete any comments PowerPoint added there, for example, "Description automatically generated."

To add alt text to visuals and tables, do one of the following:

To add alt text to an image, do one of the following:

Right-click an image. Select Alt Text... .

Select an image. Select Picture  > Alt Text .

To add alt text to a SmartArt graphic, select a SmartArt graphic, and then select SmartArt  > Alt Text .

To add alt text to a shape or embedded video, select a shape or video, and then select Shape > Alt Text .

To add alt text to a table, place the cursor in any cell, and then select  Table Layout > Alt Text .

For images, type a description. For SmartArt graphics, shapes, videos, and tables, type a title and description.

The Picture Alt Text pane in PowerPoint for the web.

Tip:  If the title on the hyperlink's destination page gives an accurate summary of what’s on the page, use it for the hyperlink text. For example, this hyperlink text matches the title on the destination page:  Create more with Microsoft templates .​​​​​​​

For the step-by-step instructions on how to create hyperlinks, go to  Add a hyperlink to a slide .

To change the font format or color, select the piece of text you want to modify

Select the Home tab.

In the Font group, select your formatting options, for example, a different font type or color.

Options in the Font menu on the ribbon in PowerPoint for the web.

Type the text you want for each bulleted or numbered item in the list.

PowerPoint supports the playback of video with multiple audio tracks. It also supports closed captions and subtitles that are embedded in video files.

Closed captions or subtitles must be encoded into the video before it is inserted into PowerPoint. PowerPoint does not support closed captions or subtitles that are stored in a separate file from the video file.

Closed captions, subtitles, and alternative audio tracks are not preserved when you use the  Compress Media  or Optimize Media Compatibility features. To learn more about optimizing media for compatibility, go to the section "Optimize media in your presentation for compatibility" in  Are you having video or audio playback issues?  Also, when turning your presentation into a video, closed captions, subtitles, or alternative audio tracks in the embedded videos are not included in the video that is saved.

When you use the  Save Media as  command on a selected video, closed captions, subtitles, and multiple audio tracks embedded in the video are preserved in the video file that is saved. For more info, go to  Save embedded media from a presentation (audio or video) .

To make your PowerPoint presentations with videos accessible, ensure the following:

Improve accessibility with the Accessibility Checker

Make your Outlook email accessible to people with disabilities ​​​​​​​

Technical support for customers with disabilities

Microsoft wants to provide the best possible experience for all our customers. If you have a disability or questions related to accessibility, please contact the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk for technical assistance. The Disability Answer Desk support team is trained in using many popular assistive technologies and can offer assistance in English, Spanish, French, and American Sign Language. Please go to the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk site to find out the contact details for your region.

If you are a government, commercial, or enterprise user, please contact the enterprise Disability Answer Desk .

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Create Accessible Presentations

How to create accessible Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

Training Videos

How to Author and Test Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations for Accessibility

How to Author and Test Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations for Accessibility

The Accessible Electronic Document Community of Practice (AED CoP) created this series of videos to explain and demonstrate the minimum steps needed to ensure your Microsoft PowerPoint presentation is Section 508 conformant.

Duration 43m 54s | 14-Part Video Tutorial

Creating PowerPoint Templates

Creating PowerPoint Templates

Learn how to use the Microsoft PowerPoint slide master to help others create accessible presentations. Understand how presentation templates can provide users with a variety of layouts and features that can reduce common accessibility issues when utilized.

Duration: 8m 18s | 1-Part Video Tutorial

Agency-Developed Guidance

The resources in this section were developed by federal agencies and shared here for your convenience. Note, much of this guidance predates the Revised 508 Standards .

  • Making a diagram screen reader friendly - ONRR.gov

Related Resources

  • Create Accessible Digital Products – Section508.gov
  • PowerPoint Accessibility – WebAIM
  • How to Make Presentations Accessible to All – W3C WAI
  • Alternate Text For Images (PDF, July 2011) – Developed by SSA
  • Review WebAIM Alternative Text for appropriate use of alternative text.
  • Review W3C’s Alt Decision Tree for guidance on how to describe images.
  • Microsoft Accessibility – Microsoft.com

We're always working to improve the information and resources on this website. To suggest a new resource for this or another page, please contact us .

Reviewed/Updated : June 2021

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Creating an Accessible PowerPoint: Step-by-Step Guide

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Welcome to a comprehensive guide on how to create an accessible PowerPoint presentation. In this guide, you’ll learn the best practices for making a PowerPoint accessible and how to use the built-in accessibility checker to ensure your presentations are inclusive for all audiences.

Video Guide

Best Practices for Making a PowerPoint Accessible

Before diving into the process of making your PowerPoint accessible, it’s essential to understand some best practices:

  • Use a built-in theme.
  • Add alternate text to all images.
  • Give every slide a unique title.
  • Ensure list elements are properly identified within the PowerPoint.
  • Format links properly.
  • Use table headers in tables.
  • Set the reading order .

By following these practices, you can create a PowerPoint presentation that is more accessible and inclusive for all users.

Using the Accessibility Checker in PowerPoint

To begin, launch the accessibility checker in PowerPoint by selecting the File button, then Info, and then Check for Issues. Click on Check Accessibility, which will bring up a list of errors that need to be fixed within the document.

Go through each error, starting with missing alternate text for images. Add appropriate alt text to each image, describing what the image represents. For example, “A screenshot from Adobe Acrobat with a parent figure tag on display.”

Next, ensure that hyperlinks are properly formatted. While you may want to leave the full URL for presentational purposes, it’s better for accessibility to use descriptive link text instead.

Ensure each slide has a unique title and properly identify list elements as you go through your slides.Additionally, check that any tables are using table headers for added accessibility.

If images do not add significant information to the presentation, mark them as decorative. The accessibility checker will no longer flag them as errors.

After addressing all errors, check for warnings about the slide’s reading order from the accessibility checker. To fix this, open the reading order pane and rearrange the content for the correct reading order. For instance, make sure to read the slide number last.

With all errors and warnings resolved, your accessible PowerPoint is ready to go! Remember, while accessibility checkers are not always perfect, PowerPoint’s checker is more fine-tuned, and following its guidance will help you create more inclusive presentations.

Remember, creating accessible PowerPoint presentations not only benefits those with disabilities but also ensures your content is available to a broader audience, making your presentations more effective and inclusive.

Start from scratch

Sometimes it is easier to simply copy and paste the content from an inaccessible PowerPoint into a new accessible template. The video below shows a real-life practice of how to do just that.

Remember, I can be  your accessibility expert . For more detailed insights, tutorials, and in-depth discussions on accessibility and related topics, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel:  The Accessibility Guy on YouTube . Subscribe for regular updates!

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Blog Education

7 Tips On How To Make Accessible Presentations

By Aditya Rana , Aug 18, 2023

how to make accessible presentations

Once upon a time, presentations were limited to lecture halls and boardrooms. 

Remember Microsoft PowerPoint? Everyone used it to create slides or pitch decks to share knowledge and exchange ideas with an audience.  

But those times are long gone. 

Today, Canva and Adobe Express have become the gold standard for creating presentations with a global audience online. 

And while these tools offer plenty of templates and customization options to make creating presentations easy, none of them prioritizes accessibility. 

This means presentations made on Canva exclude people with visual impairments or other disabilities because the design does not focus on their needs. 

To prevent that, you need graphic design software that prioritizes accessibility, like Venngage. 

In this post, I’ll show you how Venngage can help anyone create accessible presentations with a WCAG-compliant Accessible Design Tool .

Some of our accessible presentation templates are free and some require a small monthly fee. Sign-up is always free, as is access to Venngage’s drag-and-drop editor 

Click to jump ahead:

  • What is an accessible presentation?

7 tips to make accessible presentations

  • 4 examples of accessible presentations

What is an accessible presentation?  

An accessible presentation is a type of content that can be understood by everyone, including people with disabilities such as color blindness or dyslexia.

An accessible presentation is different from a normal presentation as there is a greater emphasis on ensuring design (slides, images, charts, and text) can be understood by all types of people.

Here’s an example of an accessible presentation: 

Modern Real Estate Presentation Template

Why should you make your presentations accessible?

Making inclusive and accessible presentations is important because they’re no longer limited to a physical presence.  

Anyone can create a presentation and share it online for the world to consume. 

And with the rise of remote work and interactions happening on platforms like Zoom and Google Meet, presentations fall under the category of accessible documents . 

Want to learn about other accessible content types? Check out our other posts:  A Guide On How To Create Accessible Newsletters How to Use Color Blind Friendly Palettes to Make Your Charts Accessible How to Create Accessible Infographics With Venngage

Imagine what happens when someone creates a presentation that isn’t accessible for a remote meeting with a disabled attendee.

It not only renders the content unusable but hinders effective communication, collaboration, and knowledge dissemination.

How do you make a presentation accessible to everyone?

The best strategy to make your presentations accessible is to follow WCAG guidelines 2.2 developed by the World Wide Web Consortium. 

If you’re in the US, you should refer to the ADA standards for accessible design . This is a federal law that was signed in 1991 to prohibit discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life. ADA standards were later amended in 2008 to ensure websites and digital content are accessible to people with disabilities after a case was settled covering the inaccessibility of Target’s website to individuals with visual impairments.  In the EU, accessibility falls under Web Accessibility Directive (Directive 2016/2102/EU) , which covers accessibility of websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies.

Regardless of the law that applies to your jurisdiction, most governments follow WCAG guidelines. 

This means to make your presentations accessible, you’ll need to set alt text to images , avoid using tables, choose accessible fonts , use accessible colors , and more. 

I’ll cover each of these factors and more in detail in the next section. 

Typography refers to how you arrange and present text in your slides. 

This covers everything from font selection, text size, and line spacing as these elements can either enhance accessibility or become a barrier. 

When it comes to fonts in presentations, make sure to select a sans-serif type.

Fonts like Arial, Helvetica, and Roboto have a clean appearance, but what makes them accessible are distinct letterforms that minimize confusion. 

This helps make text easier to read for people with dyslexia or other reading difficulties.

Here’s an example of an accessible presentation using the sans serif font Karla:

Phishing Employee Training Presentation Template

Text size 

Font size is also another crucial factor in ensuring presentation accessibility.

That’s because a large text size makes content on slides easy to read. 

I recommend at least a text size of at least 16px for digital presentations and 24px for presentations that will be delivered in person.

Why? The back row of a room is much further than the distance between you and your laptop screen. So keep in mind where and how your presentations will be consumed when selecting a text size. 

Limit the amount of text 

Slides are supposed to support a presentation and not be the central focus. 

If you include too much text on a slide, you will lose your audience as they will try to read what’s on the slide rather than pay attention to what you’re saying. 

And if someone has an attention deficiency, they will struggle even more to read a slide and listen to what is being said simultaneously. 

So, limit the amount of text in your slides. 

One method to write great slides is to use short phrases and keywords rather than whole sentences or paragraphs. 

Here’s a great example:

venngage accessible presentation

Skip the slide transitions

Transitions between slides used to be a cool thing to do.

I’m sure many of us spent obsessing over them while creating a presentation for a school assignment. 

slides meme

It was believed that they added visual interest to a presentation, helped break up the monotony of static slides, and could engage an audience. 

But guess what?

They’re a strict no-no for accessibility. 

Slide transitions can be visually distracting for people with visual impairments and cause discomfort, confusion, or difficulty in focusing on the content.

They can also increase the load for individuals with cognitive impairments as rapid or complex transitions may make it harder for them to process the information.

Alt text (alternative text, alt tags, alt descriptions or alt attributes) is descriptive text attached to visual elements like photos, icons, and even graphics in presentations. 

Here’s an example:

alt text accessibility venngage

If a user with visual impairments using a screen reader comes across this slide, they might not be able to see the image. 

Even assistive technology such as a screen reader cannot provide them context unless you specifically write an image alt text for it to describe the image. 

In this example, you might write: “an image of the Caryatid Porch of the Erechtheion where six maidens take the place of columns in supporting the entablature.”

alt text accessibility venngage

To write a good alt text for graphics in your slides, follow these guidelines: 

  • Describe the intent of the image
  • State why the image is important

Want to learn how to write alt text that’s actually helpful? Read our guide here: 

  • Write helpful alternative (alt) text for non-text content

Color contrast

A key section in WCAG guidelines 2.2 is color contrast recommendations to ensure content is visible to people with different vision capabilities. 

The minimum contrast ratio recommended is 4:5:1. 

In other words, for every 5 units of luminance (brightness) in the background, there should be at least 4 units of luminance in the foreground text.

But I recommend going a step above these recommendations. 

You don’t know what type of device users will use to view your presentation and this could affect the clarity of your slides. 

A good color contrast scheme will ensure your decks are visible in dim and bright rooms: 

Here are some tips to ensure adequate contrast in your presentations: 

  • Use dark colors on a light background, or light colors on dark background
  • Use solid patterns to make any elements layered over it more visible
To learn more about contrast as a design principle, read this post:  A Brief Guide to Contrast – A Design Principle

If you were creating a slide deck in Canva, Adobe, or other cloud-based design tools, you’d have no way to ensure color contrast in your slides directly. 

Instead, you would have to first create a presentation, export it, and use a third-party accessibility tool to test it. 

And if your design failed, you’d have to come back to your tool and repeat the process. 

See the issue here? It can get repetitive and waste time. 

But Venngage’s Accessible Design Tool lets you create accessible presentations from start to finish without having to leave the platform. 

Venngage integrates a WCAG-compliant Color Contrast Checker to let you test your slides as you design. 

Here’s how you can use it: 

  • Select “File” from the top navigation menu, and select “Check Accessibility” to open the Accessibility panel.
  • All elements are tested against WCAG contrast requirements and results will be listed under the “Color Contrast” header.

color accessibility test venngage

Reading order 

If you’re not familiar with screen readers, you might know about the importance of reading order. 

Reading order in accessible presentations refers to the sequence in which text and non-text elements are presented. 

A user without a disability might be able to understand the reading order of content by looking at a design, but screen readers require extra information to interpret the order in which they should present content.

If you don’t set the reading order, a screen reader might go off course and confuse users. 

Learn more about reading order in this post:

  • Use Reading Order in your accessible designs and documents

Again, most graphic design tools don’t allow you to directly set the reading order of content in your presentations. 

But Venngage’s built-in Accessibility Checker does. 

  • Open “Reading Order” in the Accessibility panel by clicking on “File” next to the Venngage logo above the top toolbar.
  • Under “Accessibility”, select “Edit Reading Order.”
  • Select the page you want to work on. This should open a list of all text elements on the page
  • Click on items in the list to highlight the corresponding text box or non-text element
  • Move any item in the list into its logical position with your mouse or keyboard

reading order accessibility venngage

Save in an accessible format 

When sharing your presentation or pitch deck, most people save in the default .ppt or .pptx format. 

It’s always better to share as an accessible PDF instead. 

While PowerPoint files can be made accessible, this process requires additional effort, but a PDF already support features that enhance accessibility.

Again, if you use Venngage’s Accessible Design Tool to create your presentations, you’ll be able to export your slide deck as an accessible PDF.

Note: This feature is only available for our Business users, but anyone can share a link to their design for free without any impact on the accessibility of your design. 

4 examples of accessible presentations  

Presentations are meant to be engaging and leave a lasting impression. 

But depending on the end objective, knowing the type of presentations to help you best achieve your goal is important. 

A sales-format presentation isn’t going to work for an academic presentation, no matter how accessible you make it. 

Informative presentation

An informative presentation is one where the main goal is to provide the audience with valuable and factual information on a topic. 

The goal is to educate, enlighten, and enhance the audience’s understanding.

This type of presentation is commonly used in educational settings, professional environments, and public speaking engagements.

Here’s an example of an accessible informative presentation:

Slack Pitch Deck

Pitch presentation

A pitch presentation helps present an idea, product, service, or project to an audience to gain their interest, support, or investment. 

Pitch decks are commonly used in business to persuade potential clients or investors. 

Here’s an example of an accessible pitch deck:

Dark Startup Pitch Deck Template

Classic presentation

A classic presentation is the traditional approach to communicating information to an audience. 

These presentations follow a structured format that includes a clear introduction, main content, and conclusion. Classic presentations can be used in various contexts, such as business meetings, academic lectures, and seminars. 

Here’s an example of a classic presentation: 

Classic Creative Presentation Template

Sales presentation 

A sales presentation is a targeted communication effort aimed at persuading clients or customers to purchase a product, service, or idea. 

Sales presentations are used to showcase the features, benefits, and value. These presentations are used in various industries, from retail and technology to B2B.

Pitch Deck Financial Projection

Frequently Asked Questions 

How do accessible presentations benefit different audiences.

Accessible presentations benefit different audiences by ensuring information can be easily understood by everyone. Accessible presentations benefit the following groups: people with visual impairments, people with hearing impairments, people with cognitive disabilities, and people using assistive technology. 

What tools can help in creating accessible presentations?

There are many tools on the market that can help you make accessible presentations such as Canva or Adobe Express, but only Venngage offers a comprehensive accessible design tool that allows you to make and export accessible presentations without having to use a third-party tool or other software. 

Are Google Slides accessible? 

Google Slides are not automatically accessible. Though Google provides some accessibility features like setting alt text to images, other features such as an in-built color contrast checker are missing and will require you to export your design to test on a third-party tool. Therefore, I recommended you use Venngage instead of Google Slides to create fully accessible presentations from start to finish. 

In Summary: Making your presentations or slide deck inclusive is not only an ethical obligation but a necessity to reach a larger target audience

How presentations are created and shared has completely changed. 

In today’s digital world, web-based tools like Venngage are leading the way to make it for anyone to create presentations, including accessible presentations. 

Besides the legal requirements, taking a few moments to make presentations that resonate with everyone will pay off in the long run. 

And Venngage will be there with you the whole way to make it as easy as possible for you no matter the presentation type you need. 

So don’t hesitate. Make your next presentation count by making it accessible. 

Making Events Accessible: Checklist for meetings, conferences, training, and presentations that are remote/virtual, in-person, or hybrid

Everyone: understanding the basics.

Be open to diversity in your audience and any accessibility issues. Basically, be aware that some of your audience might not be able to:

  • see well or at all,
  • hear well or at all,
  • move well or at all,
  • speak well or at all, or
  • understand information presented in some ways well or at all.

For example, to be inclusive:

  • organizers ensure the remote platform and the in-person venue is accessible
  • speakers describe pertinent visual information
  • participants speak clearly into a good quality microphone
  • and other considerations listed on this page

Most aspects that are general good practice are particularly important for people with cognitive disabilities. For example:

  • For meetings and presentations, start with an overview and end with a review of the most important points
  • Use consistent design in slide presentations to limit cognitive load
  • Use clear and understandable content

Respect participant’s needs and be open for other accessibility issues. People might have accessibility needs that you didn’t think of. For example: Someone might need to take breaks at set times for insulin injections. Someone with Tourette syndrome might randomly shout out during a session. Someone with a physical disability who cannot take notes might need to record the session.

Often speakers won’t know if participants have disabilities. For example, at a large conference where organizers didn’t ask registrants. In some cases, you might know the accessibility needs of participants ahead of time. Even then something could change. For example, a new participant could join the training at the last minute. Or someone could develop accessibility needs before the training.

Make your event and your presentations accessible so that you are prepared for such situations.

Sessions that are accessible to people with disabilities are also inclusive to many more audiences. For example, people with different learning styles and people who are not fluent in the language. Accessible sessions also have additional benefits to organizations and individuals.

If you want to learn about more benefits of accessible media, see User Experiences and Benefits to Organizations and benefits of transcripts .

Providing Accessible Material and Media

Format - offer handouts, slides, and other material in accessible formats.

Use formats that allow users to adapt the presentation to meet their needs, such as word processing, HTML, or EPUB. (Most users are more skilled at adapting word processing formats.) Avoid providing material only in formats that users cannot adapt, including PDF and protected Word documents. Even tagged PDF is not accessible to users with low vision and cognitive disabilities who need to change font size, line spacing, colors, zoom, reflow, and print; and has significant exceptions for screen reader users. ( references )

Some participants will need print material in alternative formats such as large print and braille. If you give participants accessible digital material in advance, then you usually don’t need to provide these alternative print formats.

Materials - Ensure slides, handouts, and other electronic material for participants is accessible

For example, provide alternative text for images and mark up headings. HTML material, such as a conference website, should meet WCAG , at least Level AA. ( Preparing Slides and Projected Material below has details for speakers. Some other resources are listed under For More Information below.)

Multimedia - Make media fully accessible, including audio and video used in sessions and recordings of sessions provided afterwards

For example, provide captions (called “intralingual subtitles” in some areas) and/or transcripts for audio, and provide audio description of visual information in videos. For guidance on creating accessible media, see Making Audio and Video Media Accessible .

Organizers: Planning the Event

Initial event planning, ensure the venue is accessible to speakers and participants (in-person).

For example, ensure the building entrance, meeting room, presentation stage, and bathrooms are accessible. (There are checklists online to help ensure a facility is accessible, such as Accessibility Checklist for Existing Facilities .) Provide accessibility information, such as the accessible routes between meeting rooms. Let speakers and participants check out the rooms in advance to suggest optimum positioning of the speaker, screen, seating, etc.

Ensure the remote meeting platform is accessible (remote)

This includes providing multiple connection options. In the W3C resource Accessibility of Remote Meetings , see the section on selecting an accessible remote meeting platform .

Arrange for assistive listening devices (ALD)(e.g., hearing loops), interpreters, and captioners, as needed

(Assistive listening devices ( ALDs ), interpreters , and ( captioners ) are explained in the Terminology section.)

Work with participants and service providers to ensure that important details are taken care of. For example, a remote captioner can hear the audio clearly, an in-person captioner has the connections they need, and a screen is provided for participants to read the captions. Or, microphones and the presenter’s computer sound output is connected to the ALD system.

Ask speakers and participants about their accessibility requirements

For example, include a question on registration forms for conferences, send an email to company-internal training participants, etc. Invite participants to include specific requests.

Event Setup

Ensure adequate sound system, and arrange for microphones.

Often wireless lapel microphones are best so that speakers can move around. When the audience will be commenting or asking questions, provide microphones for them.

Arrange for good visibility of the speakers and interpreters

Have good lighting on their face and upper body. Avoid distracting backgrounds, such as bright sunlight or flashing light.

Arrange for good Internet connections

In-person: Participants might need Internet access to follow along with an online version of displayed material. If using remote captioning , you will need a reliable connection that has enough bandwidth for transferring audio.

Remote: Strong, stable connections help speakers come through clearly.

Consider accessibility when planning the schedule

Some people need breaks to take care of medical needs. For in-person, it may take more time to get from room to room.

Keep to the schedule as much as possible, and inform participants ahead of time of any changes.

Plan to limit distractions

Avoid distractions such as catering setup during a meeting or presentation. Consider not having background music in the halls or conference rooms, including during breaks. Or, keep the volume low. Background noise is difficult for people who are hard of hearing and for captioners.

Give speakers accessibility requirements and guidance

Tell speakers that you expect their material and presentations to be accessible to people with disabilities. Consider including accessibility requirements in any contracts. Consider including the link to this page (www.w3.org/WAI/training/accessible) in speaker guidelines, e-mails, web pages, etc.

Coordinate getting material to participants, interpreters, and captioners

Work with speakers to get material to participants with accesibility needs, to interpreters, and to captioners before the event.

Speakers: Planning Your Session

Initial session planning, provide material ahead of time.

Provide slides, handouts, and other material to participants, interpreters , and captioners , as needed. Make it accessible. (More about providing accessible material is above.)

Remote: Note that content in screen sharing is often not accessible. You usually need to provide the material so participants can access it directly, not through the screen sharing.

Work with interpreters and captioners

Give them material in advance. Explain acronyms, terms, names, etc. that you will use. Be available to answer questions.

Caption audio, or otherwise make it available

Ideally, any audio you use is also available in text, for example, videos are captioned. However, if captioning is provided for your presentation, that can provide text of the audio.

Consider activities

Remember potential accessibility issues with participant activities. For example, it may be difficult or impossible for some people to use an online polling feature, arranging sticky notes on a virtual or physical board, or respond quickly to questions.

Use multiple communication methods for different learning styles

Some people can better understand verbal information. Other people can better understand pictures and diagrams. And others better understand text.

Preparing Slides and Projected Material

Limit the amount of text on each slide.

It is difficult for many people to read text and listen to the speaker at the same time. Avoid putting lots of text or other content on slides. (If you want to provide additional information, you could put it in a handout or in slides with notes separate from the presentation.) Use simple language .

Make text and important visuals big enough to be read even from the back of the room

This includes graphics on slides, videos, posters, and other non-electronic material.

Use an easy-to-read font face

Simple fonts with consistent thickness are often easier to read from a distance. Fonts where parts of the letters are thin are harder to read. Avoid fancy fonts that are difficult to read.

Use sufficient contrast between colors (“luminance contrast”)

This includes contrast between text and background colors, and between colors in graphs. There are guidelines for web pages that you can use to help determine sufficient contrast — even though the medium is different. See Understanding contrast guidance and contrast evaluation tools . Use appropriate background and text colors. Some suggest when presenting in a light room, to display dark text on a light background. And when presenting in a darkened room, to display light text on a dark background. Ensure that the weight of text is sufficient (for example, bold).

Consider how to use motion or animations

This includes text or images flying in from the side. Will the motion make the information easier to understand, or is it unnecessary? Certain types of motion can be particularly distracting for some people, and can make some people ill. Avoid blinking or flashing that could cause seizures. See Understanding Guideline 2.3: Seizures and Physical Reactions .

Make provided material accessible

If you are giving participants material, make it accessible. See provide accessible material above. An example of presentation material provided in both presentation format and web format (HTML and CSS) is linked from the top of the page after “The Benefits of WCAG 2 presentation is available in 3 formats:”.

Participants and Speakers: During the Meeting or Presentation

Describe all relevant visual information.

Say all of the information that is on each slide, including text and graphics. (This does not mean that you have to read the slide exactly as it is. It just means that you cover the visual information in what you say.)

Describe visual information in the environment. For example, a speaker asks people to raise their hands if they make their websites fully accessible. The speaker should then describe the visual response: “About half raised their hand”.

Speak clearly

And avoid speaking too fast, so participants and interpreters can better understand you and keep up.

Use simple language

Avoid or explain jargon, acronyms, and idioms. For example, expressions such as “raising the bar” can be interpreted literally by some people with cognitive disabilities and can be confusing.

Give people time to process information

Pause between topics. When you ask if anyone has questions, some people with cognitive disabilities will need extra time to form their thoughts into words.

Be visible and in good light when you talk, so participants can see your face. This helps some people hear and understand better, including many who are hard of hearing or have difficulty understanding accents. Be careful not to face away from your webcam or the audience to read projected material.

Use a good quality microphone

Ensure the microphone is positioned so it picks up your voice well. Note that if you ask “Can everyone hear me OK?” some people might be uncomfortable saying that they cannot.

In-person: Some people might need the audio electronically, even in a small room. This includes remote captioners and people using ALDs .

Ensure that all relevant sound is audible through the sound system

For example, if someone puts a question in remote chat or someone in-person doesn’t have a microphone, repeat their questions and comments into your microphone before replying.

Limit distractions

For example, ask participants to turn off mobile phone notifications, and presenters to turn off system notifications. Discourage side conversations during meetings and presentations.

For More Information

Details on how to make material that you give to participants accessible is beyond the scope of this document.

There are resources online that provide related guidance, such as:

  • ADOD Project links to Authoring Techniques for Accessible Office Documents, including for word processing and presentation applications
  • Planning an Accessible Conference , Accessible Virtual Conferences
  • Interacting with People with Disabilities

Related information from W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI):

  • Accessibility of Remote Meetings for details on meeting platform accessibility , hybrid meetings , and more.
  • Making Audio and Video Media Accessible for detailed guidance on making multimedia accessible.
  • Introduction to Web Accessibility - briefly introduces web accessibility and links to more resources.
  • WCAG 2 Overview - introduces guidelines for making web content accessible. This includes presentation material, online learning, and other material provided in web formats.
  • Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) home page - links to guidelines/standards and a wide range of support material .

Terminology

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making presentations accessible

Home Blog Presentation Ideas Accessibility in Presentations: Making your Slides Accessible

Accessibility in Presentations: Making your Slides Accessible

Accessibility in Presentations - How to make your slides more accessible in PowerPoint and Google Slides

Accessibility in web, print, and presentation design is of paramount importance. Approximately 2.2 billion people in the world have a near or distance vision impairment. An even larger number lives with other types of visual or cognitive dysfunctions. When delivering a presentation to an audience, you never know what type of people will attend. Some audience members may have dyslexia, color blindness, moderate or severe forms of vision impairments which can affect their ability to enjoy your presentation as much as others do. This post offers a walkthrough of web content accessibility guidelines and PowerPoint accessibility features that will help you design and deliver more inclusive presentations. 

Accessibility Definition 

Accessibility focuses on how a disabled person can access or benefit from a physical or digital object they interact with. 

Web accessibility, in particular, pertains to how people can interact with online materials, apps, and digital systems effectively. A huge body of website accessibility research is specifically dedicated to removing software usage barriers for people with different types of disabilities. 

What’s more, improving web accessibility is a global regulatory agenda. The US adopted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) back in 1990. Three decades later, it remains an important regulatory mechanism for imposing compliance on digital service providers. Last year, over 2,285 ADA class-action suits were filed against businesses, who failed to create an inclusive environment. 

Illustration of a woman working in a computer and a pie chart design in an accessible presentation in PowerPoint.

Globally, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) , introduced by World Wide Web Consortium, are used to ensure a greater degree of accessibility for web content and web experience. Specifically, these include guidelines for: 

  • Adding support for voice-control systems
  • Using transcripts and subtitles for content 
  • Prioritizing convenient navigation that does not use color 
  • Incorporating descriptive captions for images (alt texts) 

To ensure compliance with the above, a lot of free web accessibility tools were created such as Section508 test , AChecker accessibility checker , and MAGENTA among others. 

ADA accessibility guidelines also extend to presentation design . Since presentations are primarily digital mediums nowadays, making them easily accessible for different user groups is highly important. 

Benefits of Making Your Presentations Accessible

Some of the benefits of making your slides accessible are:

  • Inclusion of audience members with special needs
  • Ability to engage people who lack language fluency
  • Improved perception of you as a speaker (and as company representative) 
  • Supplementary materials such as transcripts or audio can be re-distributed through other channels
  • Presentation transcripts also help improve the SEO of the website where they are published

Let’s see how to create accessible PowerPoint & Google Slides presentations.

How to Make Your Presentations More Accessible: Best Practices 

Accessibility is all about making your content more inclusive to diverse people, despite their physical or mental abilities. It doesn’t take long since PowerPoint includes a number of accessibility features. You just need to be a bit more mindful about your design choices to create accessible designs. 

SLIDE Accessibility checklist showing Styles, Links, Images, Design and Evaluation

Fonts can easily make or break the aesthetic appeal of the presentation. But far more importantly, a non-suitable font can prevent some audience members from benefiting from your slides. 

Here are some best practices for accessible PowerPoint fonts: 

  • The best font size for a PowerPoint presentation is a minimum of 24 points . It’s okay to use a bigger typeface for headings and subheads to accentuate the important information. Likewise, go for a bigger size if you anticipate presenting in a big conference room. 
  • Prioritize sans serif fonts. Sans serif fonts are those without small lines (serifs) at the ends of characters. Popular examples of sans serif fonts are Palatino, Georgia, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, and Helvetica. Also, avoid handwritten and calligraphy-style fonts as these are the hardest to read for most people. 

Virtual Inclusion Website Accessible Fonts

  • Do not use flickering, flashing, and animated text. Such animations may not land well with visually impaired people or those suffering from epilepsy. In most cases, flashing fonts also make your presentation look cluttered and amateurish.
  • Use bold for emphasis. When you want to highlight an important idea, use bold styling over underline and/or italics . The latter change the letter shapes, making them less identifiable, and thus less readable.
  • Mark the hyperlinks. A good accessibility practice is to mark all hyperlinks are marked properly with both color and underlying for color-blind people. Also, use descriptive hyperlink texts. Otherwise, people who use screen readers will struggle to understand where the link leads. 

Slide Texts 

Once you’ve settled on the fonts, you’d be itching to type some presentation texts. But before (and after) you do the writing, make sure that your accessible template has the following characteristics: 

  • Use strong contrast between text and background. Contrast helps visually impaired people better distinguish the characters. Use PowerPoint accessibility checker to locate insufficient color contrasts on slides. Also, check recommended color contrast values for text by WCGA. 

Text Color Contrast for optimal readability

  • Go for simpler language. Don’t use jargon, industry-specific terms, acronyms, or catch-phrases. Most are not universally understood and some audience members may struggle to comprehend them. By using simpler language you are not “dumbing down” your copy — you make it more clear and concise. Add some more powerful words to make your texts more compelling. 
  • Check your texts for logic flow. Screen readers typically stand the text elements of the slide in the order they were added to the slide. It may be different from the order in which they actually appear. So double-check that your text flow is correct. Also, try adding ScreenTips if you are using PowerPoint.
  • Don’t bottom-align slide text. Why? Because that may hide some of the bottom texts from people sitting in the last rows if the seating is tiered. 
  • Use captions and subtitles. Both can help audience members to better follow your delivery. Also, it’s easy to do since PowerPoint allows to automatically create real-time automatic captions for slides . 

Presentation Visuals

Finally, an accessible PowerPoint template also features images everyone can understand, interpret, relate to, and process. Remember: some of the people may not see your slides well. Hence, you may need to add some extra cues for them. 

Here are the essential accessibility practices for improving presentation visuals: 

  • Limit the use of GIFs, flashy videos or, animated transitions. Likewise, avoid shifting colors, rotating icons, and moving borders. Abusing of animations, or using too many effects and flashes in your slides can create unnecessary clutter and worsen the reading experience. 
  • Opt for texts over videos, when possible. If you absolutely must add a short video, ensure that the clip has good audio context for the listener to understand its content. As an alternative, add a slide note with a summary of the video clip.
  • Include Alternative Texts (Alt Texts) for visuals. An ADA compliant PowerPoint presentation has to include alt texts for all images and other visual content. Alt texts can be processed by a screen reader, meaning people with visual impairments can better understand the featured information. Adding an alt text is easy. Right-click the graphic, select Format object , then click Alt Text pane, and provide a brief text description. The same approach works for Shapes. In the example below we can see how we configured the Alt Text for a human figure in the Health Check Dashboard template .

Configuring ALT Text in PowerPoint for Shapes and Images in Accessible PowerPoint templates

  • Highlight diverse people on your slides. Our world is wonderfully diverse. So add use inclusive visuals featuring folks of different backgrounds, ethnicities, body shapes, and abilities. In fact, that’s what most people expect from you. According to a recent Getty poll , 80% of consumers believe that businesses should show more ethnic diversity in their advertising.
  • Avoid complex charts or tables. These are often hard to process for screen reading software and audience members with cognitive issues. Thus, make your graphics as simple as possible. Be careful while using SVG format. SVGs are great as they give a lot of flexibility for designing the slides and including graphics in your presentations at a minimum file size, but the format lacks semantics for expressing structures like bar charts, tables, scattered plots, etc. The above makes the content difficult to parse by a screen reader. 

Presentation Delivery

When the big day of the public speech comes, don’t let your accessibility design efforts go to waste by sabotaging the delivery. Remember: accessibility is about creating an inclusive experience, not just objects. Respectively, you’ll need to adjust your delivery too. Here’s how: 

Before starting the presentation, ask if there are any people with special needs in the audience. That’s a simple gesture of courtesy that goes a long way. If you see some raised hands, ask how you could adjust your speech for the person’s comfort. 

Overall, speak slowly and distinctively. Use simpler language when you can, mimicking the terms you are using in the presentation copy. Don’t overload your slides with text and instead use voice to communicate and explain extra concepts. Give enough time for the audience to read the slides. Make timely pauses, allowing people to catch up with reading and processing your main points. 

Keep your language more inclusive overall. Use “they” as your main pronoun when making a generalization, instead of masculine pronoun (e.g., he), or the awkward “she/he” combo. Likewise, use plural noun forms (e.g. people, workers, employees) over terms marked for masculine (e.g. foreman, fireman, etc). 

When you want to introduce a hero to your story, for example, as part of a case study , go for a “gender-neutral” name such as Alex, Dana, Kim to avoid stereotyping either males or females. By all means, avoid blanket, generalistic statements in your presentation such as “Women are better cooks” or “Asians are good in STEM”. This may alienate some audience members. The Linguistic Society has a great set of guidelines for inclusive language. 

Finally, consider making your slides available in other formats. While accessibility in PowerPoint is rather great, converting your slides to another format such as PDF, HTML, mp3 audio, or another type of word processing document is another great step for ensuring that more people can access your content after a live delivery.

To Conclude: Go for an ADA Compliant PowerPoint Template 

Designing accessible presentations requires some effort. Making your presentations accessible means you’re considering all disabilities. If you are not sure that you’ve got all the aspects of PowerPoint ADA compliance right, consider using a premade accessible template. Accessible PowerPoint templates are fully optimized for use by people with visual impairments and other types of special needs. By opting for such a solution, you won’t have to worry about the design intricacies and have more time to hone your delivery! 

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Introduction to Web Accessibility

WebAIM Training

PowerPoint Accessibility

You are here: Home > Articles > PowerPoint Accessibility

Introduction

Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the most popular tools for creating slide show presentations. It is often used to organize thoughts for a meeting or lesson, to present key points in a live presentation, and even to create handouts. This article outlines how to can make PowerPoint files more accessible on the web.

Unless noted, the steps outlined in this article apply to Office 2016 and 365, Windows and Mac. Most screenshots are from the PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

Templates and Themes

The first step in creating a PowerPoint presentation is choosing a slide theme or template. The Design tab contains many built-in Themes and color Variants that can be used to change the look of a presentation, as well as the ability to create custom themes

making presentations accessible

Some of these templates have low contrast between slide text and the slide background, and a few may also have busy backgrounds that can make text even more difficult to read. Be sure to choose a theme with good contrast and with simple backgrounds. If the presentation will be viewed on a projector, the contrast and readability may need to be even more pronounced.

In addition to built-in and custom themes, there are thousands of templates available for download. You can search for a template by selecting File > New, and then describing the template in the Search field. Add the word "accessible" to the search for templates that are tagged as "accessible" by the creator. While this doesn't guarantee accessibility, it increases the likelihood of finding a good template. If in doubt, Microsoft has identified several templates that are optimized for accessibility .

Slide Layouts

The most important part of PowerPoint accessibility is the use of slide "layouts." Used correctly, these will ensure information on the slides have the correct heading structure and reading order.

Most slide layouts include a slide "title," usually at the top of the slide. They also typically contain one or more "placeholder" areas where you add content like lists, images, and tables to each slide. The title will be presented as a heading to screen reader users, and will be the first thing read on each slide. If each slide has a descriptive title, this will make it much easier for screen reader users to read and navigate the presentation.

Create a new slide

Although you can change the layout of a slide at any time, it is usually easiest to choose your layout when creating a new slide. You can add a new slide from the Home or Insert tab. If you choose the New Slide icon , PowerPoint will usually create a new slide with the same layout as the currently-selected slide.

You can also select the slide layout while creating a new slide. In Windows, select either the small arrow or the text " New Slide " right below the icon, and a menu will drop down with all the available slide layouts. Select one of these options to create a new slide with this layout.

making presentations accessible

In Mac, select the small arrow next to the New Slide icon to show a similar dropdown menu.

making presentations accessible

Change slide layout

To change the layout of an existing slide:

  • Select the slide you would like to change.
  • On the Home tab, select Layout .
  • Choose the desired layout from the dropdown.

making presentations accessible

This new layout will be applied to the selected slide and PowerPoint will try to move the slide contents to the correct place in the new layout. If you're moving from one pre-built layout to another, this usually works fairly well. But if you apply a layout to a slide that wasn't structured correctly in the first place (e.g., pictures and text boxes added to a blank slide), it may take some work like cutting, pasting, and deleting unnecessary boxes to apply the correct layout.

Slide Master

It is possible to make changes to all slides within a presentation, like changing the text size of all slide titles. You can also make changes to a specific slide layout, or even create new custom layouts. All of these changes are possible in the Slide Master view. This view allows you to create accessible layouts that meet the needs of the presentation while maintaining a proper heading structure and reading order.

To open Slide Master, select the View tab > Slide Master .

making presentations accessible

The different layouts that are available in the presentation will be displayed in the left-hand sidebar. The first slide in this sidebar is the Master Layout . Changes made to the Master Layout will usually be applied to every slide in the presentation. Below this Master Layout are the different individual layouts. Changes made to one of these will be applied to every slide that uses this layout.

making presentations accessible

To create a new slide layout, select Insert Layout , and then Rename to give the new layout a descriptive name. You can then insert placeholder objects, change the size and position of objects on the slide, etc.

making presentations accessible

Once all the changes are complete, select Close Master View on Windows or Close Master on Mac. Changes made within this view will automatically be applied throughout the presentation.

Slide Reading Order

Although it is best to use slide layouts when possible, there may be times when you need to add content to a slide when it would be impractical to create a new slide layout. By default, a screen reader will read the slide title first, followed by other content in elements defined in the slide layout. Then it will read any additional content on the side in the order it was added to the slide. If you add content with this principle in mind, it should be presented to screen reader users in a logical order.

You can check or change this reading order by selecting Home > Arrange > Selection Pane . The Selection Pane will appear in the right-hand sidebar.

making presentations accessible

The pane will show every object on the slide. Highlighting an object in the pane will also highlight it in the slide. The reading order for the elements in this page is bottom to top . At first this may seem illogical, but it helps to think of these objects as layers on a slide. The first object on the slide will be read first. If another object is added to the page on top of the this first object, it will be read next by a screen reader (and will also cover the first object visually). To reorder an item, simply click and drag . PowerPoint for Windows also has up/down arrow buttons that can be used to reorder items.

The Arrange dropdown menus also includes options to reorder a single object. This will change the visual position on the page as well as the reading order.

If you use these options, be sure to check the Selection Pane to ensure the reading order makes sense.

icon screenshot

Alternative Text for Images

PowerPoint presentations usually include images, and these images need equivalent alternative text .

PowerPoint 365 and 2019

The process to add alternative text is straightforward in PowerPoint 365 and 2019:

Right-click on the image and select Edit Alt text , then enter appropriate alternative text in the field that appears in the Alt Text sidebar.

If the image is decorative, leave the field blank and check Mark as decorative .

Do not select the "Generate a description for me" button. The quality of the automatically-generated descriptions is usually very poor, and a description of an image is often not the same as alternative text.

making presentations accessible

PowerPoint 2016

To add alternative text to an image in PowerPoint 2016:

  • Right-click on the image and choose Format Picture .
  • In the Format Picture sidebar, Select the Size & Properties icon and choose Alt Text .
  • Enter appropriate alternative text in the Description field only (not the Title field).

making presentations accessible

Unless it is part of the slide background, there is no way to hide a decorative image in PowerPoint 2016 or older. If the presentation is saved to a PDF, decorative images can be hidden in Acrobat Professional .

In HTML, there are ways to identify row and column headers in a data table that make the contents of the table much more accessible to screen reader users. PowerPoint allows you to identify a single row of column headers and a single column of row headers. To identify the headers in a table:

  • Click inside the table. The Table Tools options should become visible, and the Design tab (called Table Design on Mac) should be open .
  • If the top row of the table contains headers for each column (most tables do), check the make sure the Header Row checkbox is checked.
  • If the first column of the table contains headers for each row, check the First Column checkbox.

making presentations accessible

Most screen readers will not identify table headers in PowerPoint, but we still recommend going through this process. It is important to identify headers visually, and support for table headers in Microsoft Office is improving constantly. Plus, these headers will be identified when saving to PDF in the most up-to-date versions of PowerPoint.

PowerPoint automatically creates a link when a user pastes a full URL onto a slide and presses Enter or Space. Raw URLs may not make sense to screen reader users or others, so make the link text descriptive.

To change the link text right-click the link and select Edit Hyperlink . On Mac, right-click the link and select Hyperlink > Edit Hyperlink . A dialog will appear. Click in the Text to Display field at the top of the dialog and enter descriptive link text.

Screenshot of the Edit Hyperlink dialog with the Text to display field highlighted

If you are creating a presentation that is intended to be displayed both electronically and in print, you may want to include the URL and a description in the link text. For example, "WebAIM Introduction to Web Accessibility (webaim.org/intro)."

Check Accessibility

PowerPoint includes a tool that will identify many common accessibility issues. The accessibility checker is basically the same in Windows and Mac, but the steps to start the check are different.

To run the accessibility checker in Windows, select File > Info . Select the Check for Issues button and choose Check Accessibility .

making presentations accessible

To start the accessibility checker in Mac, select the Review tab, then choose Check Accessibility .

making presentations accessible

In Windows and Mac, the Accessibility Checker sidebar will appear to the right. The checker presents accessibility errors (e.g., images with no alternative text), warnings (e.g., unclear link text) and tips (e.g., check slide reading order for slides with custom content). Selecting an item in the report will highlight the issue within the slide. Information about the issue, and instructions on how to repair it, will also appear at the bottom of the sidebar.

making presentations accessible

When the issue is addressed, it will disappear from the report automatically.

Other Accessibility Principles

  • Make sure text is not too small, especially if the presentation will be viewed on a projector.
  • Do not use color as the only way to convey information.
  • Transitions and animations should be simple.
  • Complex or automatic transitions and animations can be distracting.
  • Use clear and simple language. If you have embedded video, ensure the video is captioned.
  • If you have embedded audio, include a transcript.

Convert PowerPoint to PDF

PowerPoint is effective for face-to-face presentations, but it is usually not the best format for content on the web. The file can be large, and users must either have Microsoft Office or a plugin in order to view the file. PDF is often a better format to present PowerPoint presentations electronically. The file size is relatively small, distracting slide transitions are usually removed, and everyone has a PDF reader.

All of the accessibility features outlined in this article will be retained in a PDF file, assuming it is created correctly. (See our article on Creating PDF files from Office documents ). If your presentation has tables or decorative images, and you know how to add accessibility information in Adobe Acrobat, your PDF file could even be made more accessible than the original PowerPoint file.

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Making presentations & forms accessible.

Follow these how-to guides to make sure your multimedia, presentations, websites, and forms are accessible to everyone.

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CREATING ACCESSIBLE POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS

Get step-by-step instructions on how to create PowerPoint presentations that are accessible to everyone. PowerPoint is the tool most commonly used for creating presentations, and it has many features that will make your presentation accessible to all users.

Who benefits?

All users will benefit from accessible PowerPoint presentations; but users with visual, auditory, or mobility disabilities will specifically benefit.

How-To Guide: Accessible PowerPoint Presentations

Before you begin using this guide, review this Screen Reader Simulation video from the National Clearinghouse of Rehabilitation Training Materials (NCRTM) . The video shows an accurate depiction of what it’s like to use a screen reader with a presentation. Viewing this video will help you understand why order and structure are so important when creating a presentation.

Step 1. Use Built-in Slide Layouts

Built-in slide layouts have content placeholders (the boxes you use to type text) that automatically make sure that the reading order works for everyone.

Video: Apply or Change a Slide Layout

Step 2. Give Every Slide a Unique Title

  • Creates order in your presentation.
  • Allows screen reader users to easily navigate the presentation, and to know what slide they are on.
  • Select the Title content placeholder and type in a title that is different from all other titles in your presentation.

Video: Unique Slide Titles

Step 3. Use Sufficient Color Contrast

  • Using strong color contrast allows people with low vision to see your content easier.
  • See Checking for Color Contrast for examples and tips on appropriate color contrast.
  • To check contrast, use the WebAIM contrast checker .

Highest Contrast

Complementary colors (those opposite each other on the color wheel) provide the highest color contrast, making them ideal for text and graphics color.

3 squares with circles on top of each square. For all, the square is a complementary color and the circle on top is also a complementary color.

Lowest Contrast

Analogous colors (those next to each other on the color wheel) provide the lowest contrast and should be avoided.

3 squares with circles on top of each square. For all 3 square/circle images, the square is an analogous color and the circle is also an analogous color.

Step 4. Check Text Size and Alignment

  • Use a larger size (18 pt+) sans serif font.
  • Justified text is more difficult to read because of extra space between the words.
  • Adjust the text and alignment by going to the Home tab and changing the font type, font size, and the alignment as needed.

Location of Home tab, font type drop down box, font size drop down box, and alignment buttons

Step 5. Use Meaningful Hyperlink Text

  • Screen readers scan for links, so informative link text is helpful.
  • Helpful hint: Use the title of the page as the linked text.

To add a hyperlink:

  • Select the text or image.
  • From the Insert tab, select Link.
  • In the Insert Hyperlink box, paste the URL address in the “Address” box.

Video: Add a Hyperlink to a Slide

Step 6. Include Alt Text for Images

Add or edit alt text:

  • Select an image, drawing, or graphic.
  • Right click > Alt text .
  • Enter a description.

Video: Improve Image Accessibility in PowerPoint

Step 7. Include Captioning for Audio

Closed captioning is also required for pre-recorded multimedia that contains audio. There are several ways to caption multimedia:

  • How to Request Captioning from a Vendor
  • Multimedia (See DIY Captioning Sections)

Step 8. Make Sure Videos are Accessible

If videos are used in your presentation, audio description (narration added to the soundtrack) will be required for any important visual details that are not verbally described in the video soundtrack.

Follow the instructions in Multimedia – Creating Accessible Videos to make sure your videos are accessible.

Step 9. Use Tables for Data Only

Use tables for presenting data, not for changing the visual layout of the page.

Include a heading row (rather than starting with data in the first row) because screen readers automatically read the first row as a heading row.

  • Screen readers also use header row information to identify rows and columns.
  • Using tables and headers in PowerPoint can help you create an accessible table in your presentation.

Step 10. Check the Reading Order

Reading order is very important to those who use screen readers because it ensures that the user receives the information in the order you intended. PowerPoint automatically defaults to the order in which you insert boxes on your slide.

Use the instructions listed in Set the Reading Order of PowerPoint Slide Contents to help you set or rearrange the reading order of your slides.

CREATING ACCESSIBLE GOOGLE SLIDE PRESENTATIONS

Get instructions on how to create Google Slides presentations that are accessible to everyone. Learn about key accessibility issues and how to address them in your presentation so all users can access your content. Google Slides is a collaboration tool used to create slides for presentations. Adhere to the following tips to make your presentation more readable by everyone, including people with disabilities.

All users will benefit from accessible Google Slides presentations, but users with visual, auditory, or mobility disabilities will specifically benefit.

How-To Guide: Accessible Google Slide Presentations

Before you begin using this guide, review this Screen Reader Simulation video from the National Clearinghouse of Rehabilitation Training Materials (NCRTM). The video shows an accurate depiction of what it’s like to use a screen reader with a presentation. Viewing this video will help you understand why order and structure are so important when creating a presentation.

Step 1. Choose a Pre-existing Slide Layout

These layouts have built-in reading order for the content placeholders (boxes you use to type text) and other structured elements.

  • Go to the Slide tab and select New Slide.
  • Next, select Apply Layout and choose the one that fits your needs.

Step 2. Create a Unique Title for Each Slide

Creating a unique title for each slide creates order in your presentation, and allows screen reader users to easily navigate the presentation and know what slide they’re on.

This video tutorial walks through each step.

Step 3. Use Numbered and Bulleted Lists

Google Slides automatically detect and format some lists for accessibility.

Learn how to format bulleted and numbered lists.

  • Use large, left-aligned text when possible (at least 18 pt).
  • Justified text is more difficult to read because of the extra space between the words.

Step 5. Use High Color Contrast

High color contrast makes text and images easier to read and comprehend.

See Checking for Color Contrast for examples and tips on appropriate color contrast. To check contrast, use the WebAIM contrast checker .

Screen readers just hear “image” unless the author includes alternative text for images, drawings, or other graphics.

To add or edit alt text:

  • Right click and select Alt text .
  • Enter a title and description.

Step 7. Use Tables for Data Only

Step 8. use meaningful hyperlink text.

Screen readers scan for links, so informative link text is helpful. It is best to use the title of the page as the linked text.

For example, if you’re linking to UNCG Athletics, the link should say “UNCG Athletics,” not “click here” or the full URL.

Example: Meaningful Hyperlink Text

Yes: Visit the UNCG Athletics page today!

No: Click here to visit the UNCG Athletics page.

No: Click https://uncgspartans.com/ to visit the UNCG Athletics page.

Step 9. Use Comments and Suggestions

Use the Google Slides commenting feature instead of writing notes within the text of your document or presentation. Screen reader users can jump to comments using keyboard shortcuts rather than hunting through your file.

Step 10. Check Reading Order

Reading order is very important to those who use screen readers because it ensures that the user receives the information in the order you intent it to be received.

Google Slides automatically defaults to the order in which you insert boxes on your slide.

If you need to rearrange the order of your boxes:

  • Select the box (not the text) to be reordered.
  • “Send backward” raises the object higher in the reading order.
  • “Bring forward” makes the object lower in the reading order.
  • Test the reading order with the Tab key again.

Step 11. Include Captioning for All Audio

When presenting, you can turn on automatic captions to display your words in real time at the bottom of the screen (captions are not saved).

Closed captioning is also required for pre-recorded multimedia that contains audio.

  • How to Request Captioning Through an Approved Vendor
  • Creating Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Captions
  • Learn how to present slides with automatic real-time captions .

Step 12. Ensure Videos are Accessible

Step 13. convert to powerpoint.

Google Slides does not have a built-in accessibility checker. One way to check for accessibility is to convert your presentation to PowerPoint in order to use its checker: Convert Google Slides to PowerPoint .

Once converted, use the accessibility checker and make changes as needed, and then upload the updated presentation to Google Slides.

Step 14. Share a Presentation in HTML View

Google Slides HTML view displays your whole presentation in a single, scrollable HTML page instead of displaying the presentation one slide at a time. This is especially helpful for those who use screen readers.

To access a presentation in HTML view, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + Shift + p (Windows or Chrome OS) or Command + Option + Shift + p (Mac).

CREATING ACCESSIBLE KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS

Learn how to make your Keynote presentations as accessible as possible by using pre-designed themes; formatting master slides and styles; adding alt text to images, charts and graphs; and creating unique titles for each slide.

Why is it important?

Accessible presentations are about ensuring readability, usability, and navigability for everyone. The right delivery will ensure participants gain the most possible out of the presentation.

Viewers who use a screen reader and those with mobility impairment will benefit the most from an accessible Keynote presentation. However, a presentation’s accessibility can also benefit hearing-impaired users and those with vision impairments, such as color blindness, that don’t require a screen reader.

How-To Guide: Accessible Keynote Presentations

Step 1. choose accessible theme.

Choose from pre-defined themes rather than creating your own. If you purchase or download additional themes, request accessibility information from the designers.

Make sure you select a theme that has good contrast and does not contain busy backgrounds, which make text difficult to read.

Step 2. Set Language

Set the language for screen readers to read the presentation.

Choose Language & Region from the File > Advanced menu. Choose the language for the presentation.

Step 3. Slide Layouts

Use pre-defined slide layouts rather than creating your own.

Click Add Slide and choose an appropriate layout from the drop-down list.

Step 4. Master Slides

If you want to customize slides, including font and size, colors, etc. make changes to the Master Slides rather than to individual slides.

Click View and Edit Master Slides . Click Edit Master Slides from the dialogue box.

Choose the slide layout you want to edit, and use Keynote’s formatting tools to edit the slide. If you edit text formats and want all text of that type to have the new format, click Update next to the style name.

Step 5. Titles

Use a unique title for each slide. This is easy to see in Outline View.

From the toolbar, click View and then Outline .

Body text should be included in the outline view too.

Step 6. Alt Text

Add Alt Text to each image, chart, or graph in your presentation.

Click on the image, click Format on the toolbar, then click Image . In the Description field, enter the alt text for the image.

Include extended descriptions on the slide itself.

Step 7. Tables

Make sure any tables you use are accessible.

Select the table. In the Format pane, click on Table . Indicate how many columns and rows contain headers in the table.

Step 8. Check Accessibility

Keynote does not have an accessibility checking feature. You could export it to another format (PowerPoint, PDF, HTML) and check its accessibility using PowerPoint’s accessibility checker, Acrobat’s accessibility checker, or the WebAIM Wave accessibility checker (HTML).

Choose Export To from the file menu and select the format you want to use to check the presentation’s accessibility.

Step 9. Other Accessibility Considerations

  • Avoid animations and slide transitions. These are difficult for screen readers.
  • Avoid automatic slide transitions. These are difficult for screen readers and other assistive technologies.
  • Avoid using text boxes not pre-defined in the theme.
  • Provide captions for videos included in a presentation.
  • Use a color scheme with a sharp contrast between text and background.
  • Make sure text is not too small, especially if the presentation will be displayed on a projector.
  • Do not use color as the only way to convey information.

CREATING ACCESSIBLE HTML & GOOGLE FORMS

Learn to create digital forms that all people can use by checking for instructions, cues, required form field settings, formatting requirements, and form navigation.

Without accessible forms, some users may be too frustrated or confused to complete the form or may fill it out incorrectly.

Everyone benefits from a clear, well-designed, organized, functional form. Having clear instructions, logical navigation between fields, and cues for required items helps avoid frustration and extra effort for everyone.

Creating Forms Using a Web-based App

Using a web-based app is a quick and easy way to create forms. This option allows you to be creative and have control over your form without performing some of the technical, behind-the-scenes work that makes the form function properly. You do not have to be a web developer to use a web-based app to create your form.

Google Forms

Google Forms’ primary purpose is to collect and review data; they are most often used for surveys, quizzes, registrations, ticketing/request forms, evaluations, etc. Google includes step-by-step instructions for creating forms: How to Use Google Forms .

For the most part, Google Forms is accessible by screen reader and by keyboard only (all question types are accessible). However, if you insert images, audio, and/or video media, be sure to follow the accessibility requirements for each of these (e.g., alt text for images, captioning for audio/video media).

Creating Forms Using HTML Markup

If you need to create a form directly on a webpage, you’ll need to use HTML markup.

How-To Guide: Accessible HTML Forms

HTML forms are often seen on webpages (at UNCG WordPress and Canvas are most common). If you need to create a form for your webpage using HTML, you will need to follow the steps in this tutorial to ensure that your form is accessible.

Step 1. Organize Your Form Logically

Organize your form in a logical way, by grouping similar questions together and using headings for each section.

If a form is long, choose to spread it over multiple pages. Use a progress bar to indicate progress.

Whenever possible, include options to undo actions or allow the user to confirm their responses in case a user has made an error.

Step 2. Include Label Elements

If you are coding a form yourself, ensure every form field has a <label> element.

If you are using a tool like Google Forms or Qualtrics , these tools may include appropriate HTML markup.

Example: HTML Labels

<div>

<label for=”last_name”>Last name:</label>

</div>

Step 3. Use Help Text

Use help text, which can help users know what is being asked and specify a format.

Example: HTML for Help Text

<label for=”Time”>Time</label>

<input type=”text” name=”Time Spent” id=”Time” aria-describedby=”Time-help”>

<span id=”Time-help”>Use decimals instead of time. Example: .25 means 15 minutes, .5 means 30 minutes.</span>

Step 4. Buttons

For groups of related fields such as radio buttons or checkboxes, use a <fieldset> element to group them together and a <legend> element to describe them.

Again, tools like Google Forms or Qualtrics may include appropriate HTML markup.

Example: HTML for Buttons

<fieldset>

<legend>Favorite color?</legend>

<input type=”radio” name=”color” value=”Red” id=”color_red”>

<label for=”color_red”>Red</label>

<input type=”radio” name=”color” value=”Green” id=”color_green”>

<label for=”color_green”>Green</label>

<input type=”radio” name=”color” value=”Blue” id=”color_blue”>

<label for=”color_blue”>Blue</label>

</fieldset>

Step 5. Indicate Required Elements

Indicate required elements with the word “required” or a common symbol such as an asterisk.

Never use color alone for emphasis, such as using only red.

Example: HTML for Required Element

<label for=”name”>Name (required): </label>

<input type=”text” name=”name” id=”name” required aria-required=”true”>

Step 6. Linear Order

Check the linear order of items on the page by tabbing through the items or by using an accessibility checker tool.

Because some people only use a keyboard, ensure all items can be accessed with tabbing or arrow keys, without a mouse.

A recommended tool is the WebAIM WAVE accessibility tool .

Step 7. What to Avoid

  • Avoid reset buttons , which can be accidentally selected.
  • Avoid CAPTCHA form fields , which are often used to validate if a human is completing the form rather than a bot.
  • Avoid using images as buttons . If using them, add alt text.
  • Avoid using multiple select menus , which may require users to use Ctrl/Cmd or Shift+Click to select items.
  • Avoid jump menus , which may not work in all browsers and may trap users in the menu until they select an option.
  • Avoid time limits .

CREATING ACCESSIBLE QUALTRICS FORMS

Qualtrics is another option for creating forms. Like Google Forms, Qualtrics also collects and reviews data, and it also has many useful reporting features. While a bit more complicated to use compared to Google Forms, Qualtrics has advanced questions, analysis, and reporting features that Google Forms does not. Qualtrics can be used for surveys, registrations, quizzes, evaluations, ticketing/request forms, etc. To be fully accessible to all users, several steps must be incorporated in the design of your Qualtrics form.

How-To Guide: Accessible Qualtrics Forms

Step 1. use an accessible theme.

Selecting a theme from the Qualtrics Library will help ensure your form’s theme is accessible to all users.

  • Click the Library button. (This defaults to your My Library folder.)
  • Click the drop down for your default folder (upper left corner) and select Qualtrics Library .

Step 2. Choose Accessible Question Types

Some question types are more accessible than others.

Step 3. Organize Your Form

If the form is long, choose to spread the forms over multiple pages. Use a progress bar to indicate progress.

Include options to undo actions or allow user to confirm their responses in case a user has made an error.

Step 4. Use Auto-Number Feature

Use Auto-Number feature to number your form to help users navigate through your form and keep track of the questions.

  • Select Tools from the Survey tab.
  • Choose Auto-Number Questions .
  • Optional: Change the prefix from Q to something else.

Step 5. Change Default Survey Title

Changing the default survey title gives the user more information about the form and makes it easier to identify. This text appears in the browser as the window or tab title.

  • Navigate to the Survey tab and open Survey Options .
  • Enter a new Survey Title and press the Save button.

Step 6. Insert Accessible Header

Adding an accessible header to your form lets you insert content at the top of each page. The header is typically used as the form’s title and/or logo.

  • Navigate to the Survey tab and open the Look and Feel menu.
  • Click the General tab and then click Edit underneath the Header box.
  • Here’s an example: <h1>Test Form 1/4/18</h1>
  • Click Save.

Step 7. Add Alt Text

You must include alt text for any images on your form.

  • Insert image into the Rich Content Editor and right click on the image.
  • Select Image Properties .
  • Enter a short description of your image.

Step 8. Change Default Navigation Buttons

By default, the Next and Previous buttons appear as “>>” and “<<” to indicate arrows. Changing these to text will help those who use screen readers.

  • Go to the Survey tab and open Look & Feel .
  • Click the General tab and go to the Next Button Text box; replace arrows with text (e.g., Next).
  • Do the same for the Previous Button Text box (replace arrows with Back).

Step 9. Use Checking Survey Feature

This feature checks for inaccessible issues and gives recommendations on how to fix them.

  • From the Survey tab, click Tools/Review/Check Survey Accessibility .
  • Review the list of problems and recommendations.
  • Click directly on a recommendation to jump to its location in the survey; make the suggested changes.
  • Click Done and move to the next issue.

How can you make your presentation accessible?

It is common to give a presentation at a conference with accompanying visuals. But what if there are individuals in the audience who are blind, have low vision, or are at a great distance from the screen so that they cannot see the visuals clearly or at all? What if there are individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing in the audience and cannot hear your presentation clearly or at all? You can employ presentation practices that ensure that everyone, even those with sensory impairments, can access the content of your presentation.

Several popular presenters suggest strategies for designing an accessible presentation. The following strategies are recommended by Richard Ladner, PI of the AccessComputing Alliance at the University of Washington:

  • Minimize the number of slides. No one wants to be shot with a fire hose while trying to understand your talk.
  • Use high contrast colors. Audience members with low vision or color blindness will appreciate it.
  • Do not use color as the only method for distinguishing information.
  • Use large (at least 24 point), simple, san serif fonts (e.g., Arial, Verdana, Helvetica) that can be easily read by most individuals from the back of a large room.
  • Minimize the amount of text on slides. When you advance a slide, pause to let people read it before saying anything. This will allow people who are deaf and everyone else in the audience to read the slide before you start talking. Read the text on the slide to make sure people who are blind in the audience know what is on the slide.
  • Limit the number of visuals on slides. Images that are used should be described so that people who are blind in the audience will know what image is being displayed. Graphs and charts should be described and summarized.
  • Avoid presenting images of complex charts or tables. Make graphics as simple as possible. No one wants to read a complicated graphic when there are only a few important facts about it. Save the complicated graphic for the paper.
  • Control the speed of animations so they can be described fully.
  • Make sure that videos are captioned and audio described. Sometimes it is good to give a brief description of what is in the video before it is played. This will help audience members who are blind to establish context for what they will hear.
  • Ensure the question and answer period is accessible. If there is a microphone for questioners, make sure they use it. Otherwise, repeat the questions so everyone can hear them.

For more information, consult Making Your Conference Talk Accessible . Additionally, a comprehensive checklist, presented within the universal design framework, is provided by the DO-IT Center. Entitled Equal Access: Universal Design of Your Presentation and authored by Sheryl Burgstahler, the Director of the DO-IT Center and Co-PI of AccessComputing , this publication organizes suggestions under headings of presentation facilities, preparation, presentation materials, presentation handouts, and delivery. It also includes communication tips for communicating with people who have specific types of disabilities.

For more information on how to make your PowerPoint presentation more accessible consult the Knowledge Base article, How do I make my online PowerPoint presentation accessible ?

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How to Create Accessible PowerPoint Presentations

In today’s digital age, PowerPoint presentations have become integral to communication and education. They’re essential to effectively convey information and ideas in classrooms, boardrooms, conferences, and webinars. But all that effort and mindfulness is lost for people with disabilities without PowerPoint accessibility. The features and tools that help define accessibility ensure everyone, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, can access and benefit from the content. 

In this blog post, we will explore why digitally accessible PowerPoint presentations make a positive impact and proven ways to integrate and offer them to your audience.

Accessible Presentations: The Promise of Inclusivity

Accessibility to digital content is not just a nice-to-have feature; it’s a legal requirement in many countries. Laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the United States and similar legislation worldwide mandate that public and private organizations ensure their digital content is accessible to people with disabilities. 

ADA-compliant PowerPoint presentations fulfill the promise of inclusivity. When you create presentations with accessibility in mind, you ensure everyone, including those with visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive impairments, can fully participate and engage with your content. Doing so makes education and communication accessible to a broader audience, meeting society’s increasing demand for across-the-board access and participation.

The Many Upsides of PowerPoint Accessibility

Empowering individuals with disabilities.

Presentations with accessibility in mind enable screen reader software to read the text on each slide aloud, empowering the student to comprehend the material independently. Similarly, multimedia elements like videos with closed captions and transcripts enable individuals with hearing impairments to access the necessary information and content. Digitally accessible presentations accommodate these assistive technologies , helping individuals with disabilities to navigate and interact with the content seamlessly.

Complying with Legal Requirements

Providing accessibility is a legal obligation in many regions. Non-compliance with accessibility laws can lead to legal consequences, reputational damage, and exclusion from potential audiences or markets. For example, in the United States, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act must be adhered to by organizations that receive federal funding, such as educational institutions and government agencies. Failure to comply can result in penalties and the loss of federal funding.

Expanding Your Online Reach

By making your PowerPoint presentations digitally accessible, you meet legal requirements and demonstrate your commitment to diversity and inclusion, which can enhance your organization’s reputation and appeal to a broader audience.

Enhancing Learning Experiences

Digitally accessible presentations ensure all students have equal access to educational materials, leading to better engagement, retention, and higher academic achievement. In virtual classrooms, students with disabilities should have the same opportunities as their peers to succeed academically. Providing accessible PowerPoint presentations removes barriers to learning and creates a more equitable educational experience.

Better Workplace Communication 

In the corporate world, PowerPoint presentations are a staple in meetings, training sessions, and conferences. When presentations are accessible, employees with disabilities can fully participate in meetings and training sessions. This equal participation boosts confidence and contributes to a diverse, inclusive work culture where all voices are heard and valued. 

Let’s explore some practical steps to provide accessibility with your presentation slides .  

10 Essential Tips for Making PowerPoints Accessible

1. use descriptive slide titles.

Provide precise and descriptive titles for each slide to help screen reader users navigate the presentation more easily.

2. Use Headings and Bulleted Lists

Organize your content using headings and bulleted lists, making it more structured and understandable for all users.

3. Add Alt Text to Images and Graphics

Include alt text for images and graphics, describing the visual element’s content or function, which is critical for vision-impaired end users.

4. Ensure Color Contrast

Use high-contrast color combinations for text and background to make content readable for individuals with low vision or color blindness.

5. Provide Closed Captions for Multimedia

If your presentation includes videos or audio, provide closed captions or transcripts to make the content accessible to individuals with hearing impairments.

6. Avoid Using Auto-advancing Slides

Some users may need more time to process information, so avoid setting slides to auto-advance. Allow users to control the pace of the presentation.

7. Test with Accessibility Tools

Use accessibility tools and screen readers to test your presentation for accessibility issues. Make necessary adjustments based on feedback from these tools.

8. Provide a Text-Based Version

Consider providing a text-based version of your presentation, especially for webinars or online courses, to ensure access for individuals who can’t view the slides.

9. Offer Multiple Format Options

Whenever possible, offer your presentation materials in multiple formats, such as accessible PDFs or accessible HTML, to accommodate user preferences and needs.

10. Create Accessible PowerPoint Templates

Repeat what works by replicating archetype files that achieve accessibility. It’s simply plug-and-play concerning content once you have the correct accessibility elements in place.

You need it for inclusive presentations. UserWay can help.

The Point and Power of Accessible Presentations

Creating digitally accessible PowerPoint presentations is not just a matter of compliance; it’s a commitment to inclusion, empowerment, and effective communication. By ensuring that your presentations are accessible to all, you contribute to a more inclusive society, empower individuals with disabilities, and enhance learning and communication experiences. So, the next time you create a PowerPoint presentation, remember the power of accessibility positively impacts millions of lives.

Look to UserWay for accessibility and compliance solutions trusted by millions of companies worldwide. 

UserWay: Accessibility and Compliance from A-Z

UserWay is with you every step of the way regarding digital accessibility and legal compliance. Whether you’re just starting your accessibility initiatives or need help mid-stream, we have the assistive tech tools, attorney-led legal support, and commission-driven partnerships to keep you on the right track. And with UserWay’s PDF accessibility , you can instantly convert Microsoft Office files, including PowerPoint, into accessible PDFs.  Start your UserWay relationship today. 

Answers to Common FAQs

Is it important to provide transcripts for voice-enabled powerpoints.

Yes. Narrators describe all visual content aloud, like any presentation.  They should also offer a narration transcript and related notes on the spoken content with the appearance of each slide and animation elements. 

What Are Easy Ways to Make PowerPoints Accessible?

Here are some easy tips you can do right away on your own: 

  • Communicate ideas through color schemes, textual elements, patterns, or shapes.
  • Add descriptive Alt Text to pictures, charts, and other visual objects.

Where Do You Check for PowerPoint Accessibility ? 

  • For Windows: Select File > Info > Check for Issues Button > Choose Check Accessibility.
  • For Mac: Select the Review Tab > Choose Check Accessibility.
  • Accessibility Checker sidebars are located right On Windows and Mac.

making presentations accessible

Check Your Site for Accessibility Issues

Ensure your site complies with WCAG standards.

What is Color Contrast and Why it’s Critical to Improve Accessibility

Color blindness accessibility: clear and accessible website for all, essential tips for physical & digital museum accessibility, digital eye strain: inclusive ux & wellness – all in one, the web accessibility testing guide, how covid-19 changed digital accessibility, website localization & accessibility: how it works, online banking accessibility: banking without barriers, disability pride month: celebrating inclusivity – now & always, bridging the divide: the transformative power of digital inclusion, how inclusive is the entertainment industry, what we can learn from famous people with disabilities, 5 web accessibility tips for the elderly.

Request a demo from UserWay

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7 Steps to Make Your Virtual Presentations Accessible

With the rapid rise of telework, the PEAT team recognizes it’s more important than ever to make sure virtual presentations are accessible. These efforts allow all participants, particularly people with disabilities, to effectively engage with presented content. Below, you’ll find seven essential steps and related resources to help you create accessible presentations.

Before and During Your Presentation

Step 1: research.

Before hosting a virtual presentation, identify all accessibility features of the online platform you intend to use. The following articles provide guidance on this process.

4 Elements of an Accessible Meeting Platform

How to Pick an Accessible Virtual Meeting Platform 

Step 2: Need Sensing

When sending invitations to join your virtual presentation, encourage participants to share their requirements and accommodation needs to engage effectively in your event. For example, you could craft a request like this:

“We strive to host an inclusive and accessible presentation. Accessible materials will be distributed to participants in advance, and live captioning will be provided during the event. If you have questions about the accessibility of our presentation, or want to request accommodations, please reach out to [add name] at [add email].”

Step 3: Put Systems in Place

Before your live event starts, check off these critical to-do items first:

  • Adjust your platform settings to record your presentation. Though this may not be specifically requested, it’s helpful for everyone to access content after the live event concludes.
  • Arrange captioning for your presentation in advance. If possible, it’s a best practice to provide captioning by default.
  • Secure sign language interpreters —if requested.
  • Follow this checklist for an accessible virtual meeting

Step 4: Create and Share Accessible Materials

In advance of your presentation, create and share accessible slide decks and other presentation materials with the audience. Sending your materials ahead of time helps some people prepare, and ensures that participants have access to electronic versions in case they encounter accessibility issues during the live event. Consider these resources for creating accessible presentations and documents in Word (or another software application for word processing):

  • How to Make Presentations Accessible to All
  • PowerPoint Accessibility
  • Best Practices for Making Word Documents Accessible
  • Inclusive Design for Accessible Presentations

Step 5: Prepare Speaker(s)

For a presentation to be fully accessible, speakers must understand how to use key features of the online platform and convey content in a manner that promotes accessibility. Participants with certain disabilities can absorb information better and more effectively engage in presentations when the speaker(s) follows recommendations for accessible communication . We suggest conducting a preparatory or dry-run session with the presenters in advance to verify their familiarity and comfort with the run of show and platform controls (e.g., screen sharing, muting/unmuting audio, etc.).

After Your Presentation

Step 6: share materials.

After the event concludes, disseminate a recording of your presentation and the transcript to participants. This best practice enhances the accessibility of the information you shared and affords people with and without disabilities more opportunities to review and better understand the content you presented.

Step 7: Ask for Feedback

When sharing materials from your presentation, ask participants for feedback on the content of the presentation, its utility, and their experiences with the accessibility of your virtual event.

Additional Resources

  • Find more resources for planning an accessible event in PEAT’s Telework & Accessibility Guide
  • Watch a recording and access PowerPoint slides from this recent presentation: “ Creating and Hosting an Accessible Online Presentation ”
  • Utilize additional tips for virtual meetings and presentations: “ Accessibility Tips for a Better Zoom/Virtual Meeting Experience ”
  • Use PEAT’s Buy IT tool when evaluating a meeting platform for purchase

Note: GovLoop.com originally published a version of this article on April 1; it is reprinted with permission.

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About the partnership on employment & accessible technology (peat).

Our mission is to foster collaborations that make emerging technologies accessible. To support workplaces in using inclusive technologies that engage the skills of employees with disabilities. To build a future that works. Click here to learn more about PEAT.

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Make Your Presentations Accessible: Seven Easy Steps

Whitney Quesenbery

You’ve spent hours carefully crafting your presentation and decided there’s enough good content to share. Why not then go the extra mile to make your presentation accessible for all who might want to view, quote, comment, or read it?

To get started, here are seven steps you can take to make your work accessible to all—even if they can’t see the images.

I’ve focused on PowerPoint because it’s the most widely used, but the principles behind these tips apply equally to any program.

1. Make Text Easy to See

When it comes to text, just because your presentation software offers you an almost infinite number of combinations of font, size, and color, doesn’t mean you should use them. These tips will help your entire audience:

  • Make sure text is large enough to read comfortably. Start with your body text at 24-28 points, and adjust other text for a good visual hierarchy. Think about reading on both small and large screens and for people close to or far from a projected screen (Figure 1).

Diagram showing text at 1.75” at 50ft, 5.25” at 150ft, and 8.75’ at 300ft

Figure 1. Projected text size. Make text 1.75 inches larger for every 50 feet away from the screen. (Source: Field Guides for Ensuring Voter Intent No. 8 –   Center for Civic Design )

  • Check for good contrast. Don’t let your text fade into the background by using two colors that blur into each other. Get it right and you’ve also made the text readable for people who are color-blind. Use one of the many easy tools that will tell you when there’s enough contrast, for example contrastchecker.com . And Lighthouse International has provided more useful advice on choosing colors .
  • Don’t write text in ALL CAPS. Words that are familiar are easier to read, and we see far more text in mixed case (like this sentence) than in all capital letters.
  • Avoid too many bold or fancy fonts. An unusual font can lift your presentation, but don’t go crazy. If someone is struggling to make out the words, they’ll be distracted from the message. If you are uploading the presentation to a platform such as SlideShare, make sure it handles your quirky font well.

2. Provide Text Alternatives to Describe Images

If your image is important enough to deserve space on a slide, it’s important enough to describe in what’s called alt text . As the name implies, alt text is an alternative for people who can’t see an image. Screen reader software reads this text so they know what’s in the image.

To add alt text in PowerPoint, find the Format Picture dialog (usually a right click in the picture), then navigate to Alt Text at the bottom of the list. You can usually ignore the Title field since most screen readers will only pay attention to Description . Write a clear explanation of what you are aiming to communicate with your illustration. I’ve shared more information on how to write good alt text in this presentation.

Table 1. Quick rules for writing alt text

3. Make Data Charts and Tables Accessible

Ideally you should use PowerPoint’s built-in options for tables, charts, and data visualizations, rather than importing your own or placing them on the slide as an image. This will save you time because accessibility tools are already built into them.

If you can’t do this, it’s likely you’re going to need a lot of words to explain what is in your table or chart image. If so, don’t try to pack all of your words into the alt text. Instead, you can choose from one of these three solutions:

  • Put the longer text into the PowerPoint notes area
  • Hide the text under the image (Figure 2)
  • Explain the image in visible text

In all three cases, the alt text for the image can simply tell the reader what the image is, and where it is described.

Text from the image peeking out from behind a cutaway of the illustration.

Figure 2. To hide text behind an image, create the slide visually. Then type the text into a text box. Hide the text behind the image and check the reading order to be sure the text is read right before the image. (Slide credit: Caroline Jarrett)

4. Don’t be Distracting

Avoid the temptation to ”brighten up” your presentation with loopy transitions and text flying onto the page, blinking, flashing, scrolling, or animated text. We all know these hideous tricks are tragically last century. But I thought I’d better mention them here just in case you get asked to include them.

Think about the last time you were in a bar where a TV was playing in a corner—and how impossible it was not to keep looking over at it. Flashing text is the presentation equivalent: bad for usability and even worse for accessibility. If your presentation isn’t going to hold their attention without design tricks, perhaps you need to look at your content again.

5. Get the Order Right

Figuring out the order for assistive technology to read a slide visually is easy. PowerPoint arranges the elements in the order in which they have been added to the slide, but that might not be very useful if you are trying to understand the content through a screen reader. So you have to make sure that assistive technology reads the separate elements on each slide in a sequence that makes sense.

PowerPoint organizes all of the elements on a slide into layers that determine the both the reading order and the visual presentation of any overlapping elements (as shown in Figure 3). To set the reading order, move the layers around until they are in the order you want. You can check the reading order by using the [TAB] key to select each of the elements in turn.

Three views of the reading order controls for a slide.

Figure 3. Both the Mac and Windows versions of PowerPoint have a control in the toolbar that lets you change the order of elements. In the Mac version, the elements are shown as a stack of layers, with the reading order from back (left) to front (right); in Windows as a list, read from bottom to top. (Slide credit: Caroline Jarrett)

6. Use Master Slides

You’ll make life a lot easier if you use PowerPoint’s built-in master slides. You can customize them of course, but the reading order will already be set in the master.

In fact, use as many of the built-in formatting options as you can to make the job easier for you and whichever of the accessibility technologies your audience may be using. For example, if you want bullet points, use what PowerPoint offers you. If you want to make them fancy, define that in the formatting controls rather than introducing your own custom-built bullet points which will have to be image files and therefore need explaining.

7. Practice Good Housekeeping

How long it takes to apply these basic accessibility principles will depend on how many slides you have and how many of them include hard-to-explain data and imagery. What is certain is that even the most straightforward presentation will take some time to adapt.

So if you do a lot of presentations, introducing some basic housekeeping will make the whole process less taxing, until it gets to the point of being more or less automatic.

What do I mean by good housekeeping? Well, setting up some master slides for your organization would be a good start. You might also want to:

  • Set the language in the file properties (so screen readers know how to pronounce the words).
  • Get into the habit of writing your alt text as you go, while your mind is clearly on the message and composition of whichever slide you are working on.
  • Make the native PPT files available. If you must make a PDF file, use Office for Windows to make an accessible, tagged PDF. However, this isn’t a perfect solution and you’ll still have to check that the PDF file is also fully accessible using the built-in tools in Acrobat.
  • If you are posting on SlideShare or similar sites, make sure the original file can be downloaded so that assistive technology like screen readers have access to the source. You want all the accessibility features you’ve just worked so hard on to be available.

Check the Accessibility

Recent versions of Microsoft Office for Windows offer you a way of checking your work. You can find its accessibility checker tool on the File tab under Check for issues .

Alternatively, you could do some testing with friends or colleagues, but be wary of leaning too heavily on those who use assistive technology. As a friend with a visual impairment told me, he was rather bored of being asked to be a free tester again and again, however good our intentions.

You may also want to check out the Accessible Digital Office Document (ADOD) Project , which is a fantastic resource for step-by-step instructions, by version, for Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, InDesign, and a number of other popular office programs.

This is just a start, but for most presentations, these seven steps will go a long way toward making sure that everyone can read your slides. Accessible design is also good design.

Topics: Accessibility Published in: April, 2015 in Trends in UX Quesenbery, W. (2015). Make Your Presentations Accessible: Seven Easy Steps. User Experience Magazine, 15(2). Retrieved from https://uxpamagazine.org/make-your-presentations-accessible/

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About the authors

Photo of Whitney

Whitney combines a fascination with people and an obsession to communicate clearly with her work bringing user research insights to designing products where people matter. She's also passionate about elections, and leads the Center for Civic Design with Dana Chisnell. Her books are Storytelling for User Experience , GlobalUX , and A Web for Everyone . Twitter: @whitneyq and @awebforeveryone

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How to create accessible PowerPoint presentations

Instructions for improving the accessibility of PowerPoint presentations.

  • Create accessible documents and
  • GOV.WALES standards and guidance (Sub-topic)

Arrange slides correctly

Put your slide content in a proper reading order so that screen reading software can read it aloud correctly for users with a visual impairment.

Reading order

To set the reading order, click on Home > Arrange > Selection Pane.

List objects in the slide in a logical order so that any screen reading software reads them aloud in the right order.

To rearrange objects into a new reading order, either drag the object into a new location or click on it and select Bring Forward or Send Backward.

To check the reading order, select a slide and press the Tab key. Each time you press the key, the focus moves to the next object that a screen reader will read.

Improve image accessibility

How to make the charts, graphs, and images in your PowerPoint slides accessible to users with visual or cognitive disabilities.

To make images more accessible:

  • use colour, text, patterns, or shapes to communicate ideas
  • add descriptive Alt Text to pictures, charts, and other visual objects
  • group layered images, like a picture with callout lines, into a single object
  • select View > Grayscale, to get an idea how your slides might look to someone with colour vision deficiency

Add Alt Text to a chart

  • Highlight the chart by clicking on it.
  • Right-click the chart and select Format Chart Area.
  • Select Size & Properties > Alt Text.
  • Add a meaningful Title and Description.

Add Alt Text to an image

  • Right-click the picture and select Format Picture.
  • Select the Size & Properties panel.
  • Click on the Alt Text drop-down.

Group layered images for simplicity

  • Select all the images you want to group.
  • Click on the Format tab and choose Group.

Use accessible colours and styles

PowerPoint is primarily visual and often displayed at a distance from the audience. However, you can make your PowerPoint slides more accessible by following a few best practice tips.

The colours and styles you use for slides, text, charts, and graphics go a long way toward improving accessibility in PowerPoint.

Start with a template

Prebuilt PowerPoint templates can help save time and improve accessibility in the content that you create. Microsoft have a range of these templates available for users to download at  office.com .

Templates from this collection have several features that support accessibility.

Tips for accessible colour and style choices

  • Off-white backgrounds are better for people with perceptual differences, like dyslexia.
  • Select templates and themes with sans serif fonts that are 18 points or larger.
  • Use solid backgrounds with contrasting text colour. This is preferred to patterned / watermarked backgrounds and low-contrast text themes.
  • To make information more accessible, differentiate it in more than one way. For example, use both colour and text to mark up different chart elements.

Design slides for people with Dyslexia

The elements that make presentations clearer and easier to follow for people with dyslexia also make them better in general.

These tips help you do both:

Use simple, sans serif fonts with adequate spacing between letters.

Use at least an 18-point font size. Good Sans Serif font examples include: Calibri, Franklin Gothic Book, Lucida Sans and Segoe UI.

Avoid compressed fonts, fonts with uneven line weights, fancy / script / display fonts and italic or underlined fonts.

To keep your text easily readable, limit the number of lines in each slide and leave plenty of space above and below each line.

Apply the “6 by 7” rule: only 6 words per line and 7 lines per slide.

Speaker notes

Use speaker notes to provide more in-depth information.

By default, speaker notes are formatted in a readable, sans serif font.

Share your slides after your presentation so your audience can refer to the slides and notes later. This will allow them to recall the verbal presentation delivery.

Bright white slide backgrounds can make text harder to read; choose an off-white or cream background instead.

Text should be dark, with lots of space around the letters.

Alternatively, a dark background with white text also works well.

Images are a great way to break up blocks of text and make your slide easier to scan.

Remember to add Alt Text to every image in your presentation.

A colourful, high-contrast graphic layout, with pictures and text creates a structured design.

Structured layouts are easier for people with dyslexia to understand.

Make use of alternative formats

To make a presentation more accessible to people with low vision, save it in an alternate format that can be read by a screen reader. Users can then open it on a personal device or port it to a Braille reader.

Create a document version of a presentation

  • Open the PowerPoint presentation.
  • Select File > Export > Create Handouts.
  • To create a Word version, choose Create Handouts.

Formatting options for exporting slides:

  • to display presentation slides first, followed by presentation notes, select Notes below slides
  • to include slide images in the Word document, select Paste and then select OK

Remember to add Slide Titles using Heading Styles and add Alt Text to each image to improve accessibility in the exported Word document.

Slide titles

Add a colon (:) after each slide number in the document and then copy and paste the appropriate title from the PowerPoint presentation.

Heading styles

Highlight the slide title and then select Home > Heading 1.

To see an outline of the presentation with slide headings, select View > Navigation Pane

(Sometimes people who use screen readers or Braille review the navigation first to get an overview of the document).

  • Right-click the slide image.
  • Select Picture and then choose Alt Text.

Add a meaningful title and text that describes the image in the appropriate box.

Check accessibility

Use Microsoft’s built in accessibility checker to help ensure your content is easy for people of all abilities to read and navigate.

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Creating Accessible Powerpoint Presentations

This guide outlines best practice for creating accessible PowerPoint presentations. In the UK around 2 million people have sight loss. A visual impairment could be sensitivity to light, blurred vision or blindness. So please don’t think that because you don’t have a colleague with a guide dog that this isn’t relevant to you. It is! Video calling and webinars are the new norm so accessibility should be a priority rather than an afterthought.

Imagine presenting to an audience, or at a job interview only to discover those you need to impress can’t understand your slides. It’s not a good first impression, especially if equality and inclusion are values your employer actively promotes.

Good Practice

Lots of people who are visually impaired will be able to read your slides without using any specialist software IF you make some subtle and simple changes.  Use these points when creating accessible PowerPoint presentations.

  • Use PowerPoint’s inbuilt accessibility checker. It’s super easy to use and will quickly highlight accessibility issues.
  • Have a sufficient colour contrast between the text and the background so that people with low vision can see the content. A dark font on a light background often works best and avoid a pure white background.
  • Choose your fonts carefully. Sans Serif typeface is best and should be font size 24 or above (larger for titles).

Creating Accessible PowerPoint Presentations - a yellow background with Sans Serif minimum 24 written in black

  • Some people will find reading italic and underlined text difficult so keep these to a minimum if you must use them.
  • Make sure that you are not using colour alone to convey information. It can be useful to select greyscale from the view tab and scan your slides for occurrences of colour coding.
  • Avoid busy backgrounds and keep ample ‘white space’ between sentences and paragraphs.
  • Avoid using animations and sounds if it’s not vital to the presentation because they are distracting.

More Insights

Whilst not exhaustive these tips are a good starting point. Every month we add new articles to this site ranging from ‘How To’ practical instructions to insightful interviews.

Please contact us if you’d like to chat about working together to make your organisation accessible for all. We offer accessibility audits, disability awareness training, British Sign Language Lessons and much more.

You may also enjoy these articles:

12 Tips for Accessible Video Calls

Video Conferencing with Deaf Colleagues

What is A Hidden Disability

Join us on twitter @EnhanceTheUK for more practical tips on disability awareness and making your working environment inclusive for all.

Related Posts

How to make healthcare appointments more accessible for D/deaf patients

How to make healthcare appointments more accessible for D/deaf patients

Five quick ways to make sure your event is accessible

Five quick ways to make sure your event is accessible

Top Tips for Making Meetings Accessible to Deaf People

Top Tips for Making Meetings Accessible to Deaf People

Blog Accessibility in government

https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2018/03/13/advice-for-making-events-and-presentations-accessible/

Advice for making events and presentations accessible

Blurry picture of a man's profile with a screen with a transcript in the background

Accessibility means making sure there are no barriers that might prevent someone from accessing or using something.

Accessibility should be a part of everything we make and deliver. This includes events and presentations.

Events and presentations are a great way of showing new work, sharing learnings and helping people to build capability. So we need to make sure that no one is excluded from them.

If you’re running an event or giving a presentation, here are some things you can do to make sure they are as accessible as possible.

If you’re running an event

Before the event.

  • check whether any attendees and speakers need anything to be able to participate in the event – you could add some text to the invitation or the registration page asking: “Is there anything we can do to enable you to be able to fully participate in this event?”
  • check that the venue is accessible – it should be wheelchair accessible and any stairs may need rails
  • consider live captioning – having live captioning can make sure people with hearing impairments can access the event; it will also mean you will have a transcript at the end of the event – live captions cost roughly £110 an hour
  • make sure that the venue has a hearing loop and that you know how to connect the sound system to it
  • check the hearing loop and make sure that the audience has joining details for it
  • make sure that you can control and adjust the lighting if necessary
  • make sure you have a second and even third microphone with runners for getting audience questions

Making things accessible for your speakers

Bear in mind that speakers might have accessibility requirements too. Here are some things to consider:

  • any staging may need to be wheelchair accessible
  • any steps may need rails
  • lecterns and microphone stands should ideally be height-adjustable, and this should be easy to do as it may need to be switched between speakers

Making things accessible for remote audiences

If you have a remote audience dialling in to the event then you need to ensure that the event is accessible for them too. Here are some ways to do that:

  • test the setup in advance and make sure there is internet connectivity
  • make sure that the camera feed has both the speaker and the slides in shot, and make sure the speaker is not standing in the way of the slides
  • consider sharing slides directly to the web feed – this will give the clearest view but of course will mean remote participants can’t see the speaker's face or gestures
  • ensure remote participants can submit questions and take part fully in Q&As and feedback

If you’re giving a presentation

When you’re writing the presentation.

Make sure that your slides are clear and easy to read. At GDS, we’ve designed our slides template to be as accessible as possible. There are a few things to take into account:

  • make sure there is a good contrast between text colours and background colours – our slides use black on a grey background or white on a dark blue background
  • avoid white backgrounds because of glare – this is why we use a grey background for black text
  • if you are using text over an image, make sure the image is dark enough to ensure contrast and simple enough not to distract from the text
  • use large type sizes and keep the typeface simple – we use Helvetica Neue at 32pt or 63pt

Using videos

If you’re using a video as part of your presentation, there are a few things to think about to make sure it is as accessible as possible:

  • ensure that all videos have captions – these should be clear and large enough to see from the back of a large room
  • ensure that any visual content in the video is described in the audio – if it isn’t, then you should describe it to the audience yourself
  • check video sound levels in the room before the live presentation

When you’re presenting

An audience listening to a talk with a slide saying 'what it's like to be deaf' in the background

There are a few things to think about when you’re giving your presentation. This advice will help make your presentation more accessible. It will also make it easier for everyone in the audience to follow your presentation – whether or not they have access needs.

  • if you’re using a hand-held microphone, keep it close to your mouth at all times – imagine you’re eating a rapidly melting ice-cream on a hot day
  • if you’re using a fixed microphone, try to keep as near to it as possible, even when you’re addressing someone in the audience
  • if you’re using images or video in your presentation to convey essential information, make sure you also explain that information verbally
  • if you’re doing a Q&A with the audience, then make sure the venue has a spare microphone for questioners to use – if there is no microphone or if the questioner doesn’t speak clearly into it, then make sure you repeat the question into your microphone
Do you have any tips on making events and presentations accessible? Share them in the comments below.

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Comment by David posted on 16 March 2018

Alistair, good list, but you have ignored the communication needs of blind and deaf-blind participants. Just some thoughts for the inclusive age: * Provide indoor beacon bluetooth smart phone app navigation (i.e. Blindsquare), or offer human assistance for guiding. * Ensure pathways and halls are clear of wires and obstacles. * If possible provide a real time audio description channel (via bluetooth or wireless) for smart phone listening, or an audio channel to broadcast the speaker. * Ensure the realtime text captioning is screen reader accessible (iOS Voiceover and Android Talkback). * Provide a point of orientation for the speaker on the stage (podium or chair). * Ensure the presentation material is in a downloadable WCAG accessible digital format.

Comment by Suzanne Amos posted on 17 March 2018

Very useful checklist - thank you! Just need to get over my fear of public speaking first 🙂 and then buddy up with a colleague to help out with all the tech check aspects.

Comment by Aurora Betony posted on 06 April 2018

Many thanks for this blog post Alistair. I'd like to add to it 5 things you can do to make an oral presentation accessible to dyslexic people. 1. Cater for all learning styles. (This will help everyone, not only dyslexic people, because everyone learns differently). In other words, give your audience content to listen to (vary this by including some audio clips of other people's voices); look at (present information visually wherever possible e.g. timelines, sketchnote summary); and do (e.g. distribute your slides in advance so that people can bring a copy and add their own notes). If you can sing, sing a summary of the bit of your presentation that you most want people to take away with them. Use a tune you already know. 2. Generally, speak at a steady pace. Leave at least a few seconds' gap for processing at the ends of sections when you don't say or do anything. Vary the speed, volume and pitch of voice you use. 3. At the beginning of your presentation, give the gist of what you're going to say. 4. Dramatise some of your content e.g. tell stories about real or imaginary people, ideally that move your audience emotionally; or go into role and do a monologue or dialogue with others. You may be able to use video or audio clips that other people have made for this. 5. Let anyone make an audio recording of your presentation for their own personal use.

Comment by David Vosnacos posted on 11 May 2018

David, Good points. And here are some additional considerations I usually employ: * Orientate the audience to the position of the lectern by providing an orientation to the room using a clock face technique. Step off mic to give this exact location: the position of the sound system speakers often doesn't give this context. * Orientate the presenter to the layout of the actual lectern particular where the static microphone is located. * Conduct a roll call, using a series of roaming microphones, of all those in audience to orientate those present who else is in the room. (name badges aren't accessible to everyone) Typically this can take up to 5 minutes for an audience of up to 100 people. * If an audience member provides a specific lapel microphone ensure the presenter uses it. (for example some cochlear implants may not use any other means such as a loop or T switch configuration) Ideally though have this patched into the audio mixing desk so all audio is accessible: from the the presenter, their laptop etc. * Make sure all questions from the audience go through the roaming microphones: no exception.

Comment by Mike Hughes posted on 24 July 2018

Two things to add.

1) The myth of learning styles is slowly being debunked internationally but it's a long battle. The evidence suggests that whilst people have a preferred learning style that isn't necessarily the most productive process for them. Most people really do learn through simple bite-sized chunks; repetition and practical examples.

2) In terms of accessibility on the day of an event from a visually impaired perspective there is no mention of

a) signage. Venues need checking externally and internally and additional signage may need to be placed. Especially important in lobbies; dark corridors and so on.

b) directions. Making a venue accessible is all very well but if the details on how to get there include a poor, small, blurred map with no instructions on coming by car, public transport etc. then you've an instant barrier to attendance if people believe something is more difficult than it actually is. Initial materials need to be produced in an accessible format rather than requesting if people need that. Producing something in 16 point doesn't cost much more and can make a huge difference from the outset.

c) Nowadays there is considerable emphasis on Wi-Fi accessibility. This usually misses the point. Local Wi-Fi is usually bandwidth limited and not fit for purpose. More important is that a venue does not prevent access to 3G or 4G so people. A room which is a dead zone should simply not be used.

3) Disappointed to see the comment about text overlaying images. Please don't attempt to make it contrast well. You're doing a presentation and your concern should be for your audience not some stylistic foible. Text simply has no need to overlap images and presenters should be asked to make sure it doesn't.

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Accessibility in government.

This is for everyone: documenting how we're rebuilding inclusive digital services across the UK Government. Find out more

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Public sector organisations have a legal duty to make websites accessible. Find out how your organisation is impacted at GOV.UK/accessibility-regulations  

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How To Make MS PowerPoint Presentations More Accessible

PowerPoint presentations can be an excellent way to present your ideas to your intended audience. Given the fact that more than 12 million people in the US have some kind of visual impairment, chances are some of your intended audiences might be visually impaired and may rely on assistive technology to access your presentations. 

Considering this possibility, it makes sense for you to create presentations that everyone, including individuals with disabilities can easily access. Here are 12 tips to make your PowerPoint presentations more accessible. 

Name all of your slides

Provide unique titles to all the slides in your presentation so that people who use assistive technology can navigate the document easily. Make sure the titles are descriptive enough that people can discern between slides. 

Organize your slides in the proper order

It’s crucial to organize your slides in a logical reading order so that screen reading tools can read them in the order they are meant to be. You can use the Reading Order pane in the Accessibility Checker tool to organize your slides and set the reading order. 

Add alternative text to visuals  

Incorporating multimedia elements – especially visuals – can make your presentations look appealing. At the same time, visual elements can be hard to understand for those who use screen readers and text-to-speech tools to access your documents. To avoid this problem, add alternative text or text descriptions for all meaningful visual content, including photos, stock images, charts, and infographics.

Make your videos more accessible

If your presentation contains videos, you must make them accessible to an audience with diverse accessibility needs. Include an audio track with video descriptions and subtitles or closed captions to make your videos more accessible. 

Make sure fonts are easily readable  

Use widely available sans serif fonts like Calibri andArial. Do not use fancy or novelty fonts that can be hard to read. Do not use italics, underlines, text-shadow, or other effects, except in cases where it is necessary. 

While there is no ideal font size for PowerPoint presentations, it should not be smaller than 18 points, regardless of other factors. 

Pay attention to the contrast ratio

The contrast ratio between the foreground and background color can impact the accessibility of your presentation, which is why you should be careful about the colors you choose. 

Ideally, you should use near black or any other dark color for your text and an off-white or cream-colored background. You can use the Accessibility Checker tool to determine if the contrast ratio is sufficient to make your presentation accessible. 

Avoid animations 

Avoid animations as much as possible, as they can be distracting for some people. More importantly, any visual content that moves rapidly or flashes, flickers, or blinks at a specific rate can induce seizure in people with photosensitive epilepsy. 

Avoid automatic slide transitions

Automatic slide transitions should be V, as they can disrupt the flow of your presentation and make it harder for some users to read the slide content. 

Minimize the amount of text in your slides

Adding too much text to your slides can affect readability. Ideally, you should follow the 6x7 rule – no more than six words per line and no more than seven lines of text per slide. And leave sufficient space between each line of text to keep content readable. 

Limit the number of slides

Limit the number of slides to the extent you can. Try to make your points as succinctly as possible. It can make your document more accessible for everyone – not just for people with disabilities. 

Avoid non-descriptive URLs

Don't use URLs, shortened URLs, or non-descriptive text like "click here" or "learn more," as they do not provide any information about the link to users, particularly those who use screen readers and text-to-speech tools. Make hyperlinks descriptive enough for the average user to read and understand, either by adding hyperlink text or by adding ScreenTips.  

Use the Accessibility Checker tool 

Use the Accessibility Checker tool to check for readability, legibility, and accessibility issues that can make it harder for people with disabilities to access your presentations.  

Final Word – Engage the entire audience 

As a presenter, your first goal should be to ensure the entire audience, including users with vision, hearing, motor, or cognitive impairments, are in a position to engage with and benefit from your content. Making your presentation more accessible using the tips and insights in this short guide will help achieve this goal.

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Making presentations accessible

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You know that websites need to be accessible to people with disabilities. But have you thought about your presentations?

Presentation accessibility means that your audience can experience, access, and understand your presentation. There are different considerations to presentation accessibility, depending on whether it is presented live or shared online. Knowing in advance how you want to present allows you to ensure that your content is fully accessible regardless of how the audience will experience it.

Accessibility considerations for live presentations

There are two major font categories:

  • Serif (fonts with finishing strokes on the ends of characters, such as Times New Roman)
  • Sans Serif (font without finishing strokes, such as Calibri)

It’s generally agreed that sans-serif fonts are more readable and accessible at smaller point sizes than serif fonts. Serif fonts are often used for presentation elements that have a higher point size, such as headings and titles.

Several accessible fonts are common on today’s devices. Verdana and Tahoma are two fonts that are considered quite accessible and can be found across device platforms and formats.

For more detail about the accessibility of fonts, see WebAIM’s Fonts article .

Slide design and layout

It’s easy to create striking and well-designed presentations using the many available themes and templates. Using a theme’s built-in slide layouts promotes consistent and uniform design, which is essential for usability and accessibility. However, many themes use fonts that are either too small or too ornate to be truly accessible. Search online for accessible themes (there are plenty to choose from), or build an accessible theme using your agency logo, branding, colors, and conventions. Whichever option you choose, stick to the built-in formatting of the slide layouts with few or no modifications. Doing so will significantly increase the accessibility of the presentation with less additional work required later.

Layout guidelines

Make sure that the slide text is large enough to be seen by your audience. Refrain from trying to fit too much content on one slide, forcing the font point size to get too small. A good rule of thumb for slide content text is between 20–28 points, and for headers, aim for 36–44 points.

Here are some other things to consider when laying out presentations:

  • Make sure each slide has a unique header. If there is more than one slide on the same topic, add a numerical identifier to the header, such as (1 of 2).
  • Avoid using italics or all caps.
  • Do not use color alone to indicate importance, but bold text is allowed.
  • Make sure to display slide numbers.
  • Keep transitions and animations simple. Fade or appear animations are acceptable, but avoid flashing and flying text.

Content guidelines

While slide design is important, your content also needs to be developed with accessibility in mind. Keep it brief, focusing on short blurbs or lists of information. It’s easy to overfill a slide with content, especially when font sizes are in the accessible range. When in doubt, break a dense slide into multiple slides to keep readability optimal.

Regarding readability, Plain Language Association International (PLAIN) identifies five general areas to consider when writing:

  • Audience and purpose

To learn more about each area, visit PLAIN’s “What is plain language?” webpage .

Color contrast is also important. Make sure the text color contrasts sufficiently with background colors. This applies to text in images as well. Contrast Checker is a helpful place to test different colors , and the results it provides conform to recognized accessibility standards.

Accessibility considerations for online/shared presentations

If you're posting your presentation on a website, sharing it on a slide service, or emailing it to users, there are additional accessibility concerns to be aware of. Some people might use assistive technology, such as screen readers, to access the content. Those users may have difficulty navigating or comprehending your presentation if the additional accessibility enhancements in this section are not applied. Both Microsoft and Google offer guidance specific to their tools, but here are some critical guidelines to remember.

Describing images

Adding text descriptions to images, commonly referred to as alt text, allows for users with screen readers to get a verbal description of the images in presentations. The alt text should describe the content and function of the image. Some examples include “Photo of a smiling woman” or “Logo and link to our home page.” Images that are decorative and do not provide any content or function do not need alt text. However, when unsure if an image is decorative or not, add some alt text.

Reading order

The order a screen reader reads a slide's contents is important. With a word processing document, the reading order is natural as the content generally proceeds from left to right and top to bottom. On a slide, however, content is added in separate text boxes that can be created or edited in any order. Sometimes the headings are at the bottom or side of a slide, but the intention is that they are read first. Imagine how confusing the content would become if it were read out of order .

Using the built-in slide layouts can minimize problems as they were designed to be accessible with reading order in mind. However, customizing or creating new layouts can lead to reading order adjustments being necessary.

Other considerations

In addition to adding alt text and adjusting the reading order of slide content, there are a few more aspects of a presentation that should be reviewed if it is going to be shared online:

  • Make sure that links are clear and describe where the link will go. Avoid using only the words “Click Here”; opt instead to use the name of the website as the link itself.
  • If your presentation includes video, make sure it has captions and, ideally, audio descriptions of the action. If captions are not an option, provide a link to a transcript.
  • If your presentation includes audio, provide a link to a transcript.
  • If you opt to save your presentation as a PDF, make sure to enable the setting to allow tags for accessibility to be created; otherwise, all the hard work will be for naught, and the PDF will not be accessible.

Using automated tools to check the accessibility of your presentation

It is clear by now that there are quite a few facets to making presentations accessible. Ideally, accessibility should be a priority throughout the design process. Waiting until the end to make changes and edits is more time-consuming and increases the likelihood of making errors.

There are automated tools that scan presentations to check for many things that may have been missed.

PowerPoint has a Check Accessibility tool, but for G Suite, you need to download an add-in. The most popular one is called Grackle .

These tools are a good first step to begin an overall review of your presentation but note that there are limits to what they will catch. For example, some software will place the URL to downloaded images into the alt text field. An automated scan would recognize that alt text was added to the image; however, that text would not be helpful to a screen reader user.

While it might seem like there is a lot to remember for accessibility, it’s easy to manage when you think about it at the beginning of your design process. Implementing accessibility will yield a presentation that everyone can access and enjoy.

Keith Casebonne

Keith Casebonne

Technology and Communications Manager, Disability Rights Florida

Keith Casebonne is the Technology and Communications Manager at Disability Rights Florida, where he has worked for 17 years. As manager of both information technology and communications, Keith regularly works in social media, website development, graphic design, podcasting, network administration, computer security, and technical support. Digital accessibility is an area of special focus. Keith regularly speaks and writes about accessibility, security, and social media.

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Don't start your work presentations by simply saying 'hello.' Here's how to be more engaging in the conference room.

  • I'm a public-speaking expert, and I've trained many executives and senior teams.
  • I tell all of them to stop starting work presentations with a salutation or a "hello."
  • Instead, you should engage your audience by telling a story or asking a question.

Insider Today

I'm sure you've sat through plenty of presentations where the presenter starts with a polite salutation like, "Hello, thank you for having me here today," or, "I am so glad to be here" — often followed by their name and professional résumé . Sometimes, if it's an internal meeting, you get the same salutations followed by an agenda slide with bullet points and the presenter narrating it.

As a public-speaking coach who has worked with many executives and senior teams, I know how to make work presentations more engaging. Here's how you should change your approach.

If you stick to your old ways, you aren't leaving a memorable first impression

Your audience is thinking three things when you walk into that conference room or onto that stage: Who is this person, why should I care, and how are they going to solve my problem?

Let's face it: Most people are more interested in how you will solve their problem than in you and your professional résumé. So let's flip the script a bit. Start with the solution to their problem, briefly talk about yourself for credibility, and then give them a reason to care.

Instead, try to capture their attention

Begin your presentation with a hook or a story — something that grabs their attention right from the start. For instance, your hook might be, "Did you know this?" or "What if that?" It could also be a short story that humanizes your services or products.

Most presentations are predictable; wouldn't it be better for both your time and your audience if you could introduce an element of surprise?

Some might feel it rude not to thank the organizer or greet the audience, so I suggest finding another place in your presentation for this. Here's a good structure:

Intro: "What if you could be a more confident and credible presenter? What if you could engage with your audience so they remember your products or services?"

Credibility: "My name is Meridith, and I've been coaching entrepreneurs and executives on how to speak with spark for over a decade, and I am really excited to be here. I want to thank [insert name] for inviting me to share the afternoon with you."

Solution: "Today, I will give you three ways to make your audience remember your products and services, helping you stand out in a competitive market. Let's get this party started!"

You could also try to form a personal connection

Often, presentations lack a personal touch. Try sharing a relevant personal anecdote or experience that relates to your topic. This not only makes your work presentation more relatable but also helps to establish a deeper connection with your audience.

For example, you could say: "When I was younger, I often hid in the back of the classroom, hoping the teacher wouldn't call on me because I didn't want to sound stupid or have the wrong answer. Later in life, I discovered acting and improv comedy . It was through the practice of these two art forms that I developed my confidence and learned how to engage more courageously with others. Today, I will give you solutions for how you can also better engage your audience with spark."

Try to encourage interaction

At the very least, you should try to engage your audience from the beginning — whether in person or on virtual calls. You can ask a thought-provoking question or propose a challenge that involves them directly. This approach shifts the dynamic to more interactive and engaging sessions.

If you implement any of these suggestions, you can make your presentation memorable and impactful immediately. And you'll most likely get a larger return on your investment of time and energy.

In today's fast-paced world, where attention spans are increasingly shorter than ever, it's crucial to grab and hold your audience's attention from the very beginning. By doing so, you set the stage for a more engaging and productive interaction. So challenge yourself to break free from presentation norms and embrace a style that resonates deeply with your audience and leaves a lasting impression.

making presentations accessible

Watch: A public speaking champion reveals 3 keys to nailing your business presentation

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  1. Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with

    To manually launch the Accessibility Checker, select Review > Check Accessibility . The Accessibility pane opens, and you can now review and fix accessibility issues. For more info, go to Improve accessibility with the Accessibility Checker. Top of Page Create accessible slides

  2. Create Accessible Presentations

    PowerPoint Accessibility - WebAIM How to Make Presentations Accessible to All - W3C WAI Alternate Text For Images (PDF, July 2011) - Developed by SSA Review WebAIM Alternative Text for appropriate use of alternative text. Review W3C's Alt Decision Tree for guidance on how to describe images. Microsoft Accessibility - Microsoft.com Before You Go

  3. Creating an Accessible PowerPoint: Step-by-Step Guide

    Video Guide How to make a Microsoft PowerPoint Accessible to Section 508 Standards Watch on Best Practices for Making a PowerPoint Accessible Before diving into the process of making your PowerPoint accessible, it's essential to understand some best practices: Use a built-in theme. Add alternate text to all images. Give every slide a unique title.

  4. 7 Tips On How To Make Accessible Presentations

    Blog Education 7 Tips On How To Make Accessible Presentations By Aditya Rana, Aug 18, 2023 Once upon a time, presentations were limited to lecture halls and boardrooms. Remember Microsoft PowerPoint? Everyone used it to create slides or pitch decks to share knowledge and exchange ideas with an audience. But those times are long gone.

  5. Making Events Accessible:

    Making Events Accessible: Checklist for meetings, conferences, training, and presentations that are remote/virtual, in-person, or hybrid Summary This page helps presenters, participants, and organizers make events inclusive, particularly to people with disabilities. This benefits everyone, particularly international participants. Page Contents

  6. How to create accessible PowerPoint presentations

    55 Share 12K views 1 year ago Tips and Tricks In this video tutorial, you will learn how to make your PowerPoint presentation accessible for those with a vision or reading disability by...

  7. Tips for Delivering an Accessible Presentation

    Provide attendees materials (ideally, ahead of time) and in an accessible format (e.g., use text-based formats with structured headings and text descriptions of images); also give sign language interpreters and real time captioners materials in advance.

  8. Learn how to create accessible content in PowerPoint and across

    And while the event is over, you can still register for access to the presentation and Q&A video recordings, chat, and handouts until November 15, 2022. Microsoft will be participating in a new event on March 10-11, 2022, The Design + PowerPoint Summit, which will also dive in to how to make your presentations accessible.

  9. Accessibility in Presentations: Making your Slides Accessible

    Since presentations are primarily digital mediums nowadays, making them easily accessible for different user groups is highly important. Benefits of Making Your Presentations Accessible Some of the benefits of making your slides accessible are: Inclusion of audience members with special needs Ability to engage people who lack language fluency

  10. Equal Access: Universal Design of Your Presentation

    2015. A checklist for making your presentation welcoming and accessible to everyone Increasing numbers of people with disabilities attend professional conferences and meetings. Most presenters have the goal that everyone who attends their presentation is able to fully participate and access information. Reaching this goal involves efforts at ...

  11. WebAIM: PowerPoint Accessibility

    Templates and Themes. The first step in creating a PowerPoint presentation is choosing a slide theme or template. The Design tab contains many built-in Themes and color Variants that can be used to change the look of a presentation, as well as the ability to create custom themes. Some of these templates have low contrast between slide text and the slide background, and a few may also have busy ...

  12. Making Presentations & Forms Accessible

    Get step-by-step instructions on how to create PowerPoint presentations that are accessible to everyone. PowerPoint is the tool most commonly used for creating presentations, and it has many features that will make your presentation accessible to all users. All users will benefit from accessible PowerPoint presentations; but users with visual ...

  13. How can you make your presentation accessible?

    Several popular presenters suggest strategies for designing an accessible presentation. The following strategies are recommended by Richard Ladner, PI of the AccessComputing Alliance at the University of Washington: Minimize the number of slides. No one wants to be shot with a fire hose while trying to understand your talk.

  14. Making your PowerPoint presentations accessible

    Empower people to achieve more by making your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with disabilities. Learn how use of color and contrast affect the...

  15. Creating Accessible PowerPoint Presentations 10 Tips

    Enhancing Learning Experiences Digitally accessible presentations ensure all students have equal access to educational materials, leading to better engagement, retention, and higher academic achievement. In virtual classrooms, students with disabilities should have the same opportunities as their peers to succeed academically.

  16. 7 Steps to Make Your Virtual Presentations Accessible

    Step 1: Research Before hosting a virtual presentation, identify all accessibility features of the online platform you intend to use. The following articles provide guidance on this process. 4 Elements of an Accessible Meeting Platform How to Pick an Accessible Virtual Meeting Platform Step 2: Need Sensing

  17. Make Your Presentations Accessible: Seven Easy Steps

    1. Make Text Easy to See When it comes to text, just because your presentation software offers you an almost infinite number of combinations of font, size, and color, doesn't mean you should use them. These tips will help your entire audience: Make sure text is large enough to read comfortably.

  18. 7 Steps to Make Your Virtual Presentations Accessible

    Here are resources for creating accessible presentations and Word documents: How to Make Presentations Accessible to All PowerPoint Accessibility Best Practices for Making Word Documents Accessible Step 5, Prepare Speaker(s): For a presentation to be fully accessible, speakers must understand how to use platfo rm features and convey content in ...

  19. How to create accessible PowerPoint presentations

    How to create accessible PowerPoint presentations Instructions for improving the accessibility of PowerPoint presentations. Part of: Create accessible documents and GOV.WALES standards and guidance First published: 4 June 2020 Last updated: 19 April 2022 Contents Arrange slides correctly Improve image accessibility Use accessible colours and styles

  20. Creating Accessible Powerpoint Presentations

    Use these points when creating accessible PowerPoint presentations. Use PowerPoint's inbuilt accessibility checker. It's super easy to use and will quickly highlight accessibility issues. Have a sufficient colour contrast between the text and the background so that people with low vision can see the content.

  21. Advice for making events and presentations accessible

    If you're giving a presentation When you're writing the presentation Make sure that your slides are clear and easy to read. At GDS, we've designed our slides template to be as accessible as...

  22. How To Make MS PowerPoint Presentations More Accessible

    Making your presentation more accessible using the tips and insights in this short guide will help achieve this goal. 2024 Events. In 2024, Accessibility.com will be exploring specific digital accessibility services and how to choose the right vendor for your business. Our first event is on Tuesday, February 6th, 2024, at 1 PM ET, focusing on ...

  23. Making presentations accessible

    It is clear by now that there are quite a few facets to making presentations accessible. Ideally, accessibility should be a priority throughout the design process. Waiting until the end to make changes and edits is more time-consuming and increases the likelihood of making errors.

  24. How to Start a Work Presentation, Be Engaging: Public Speaking Expert

    An image of a chain link. It symobilizes a website link url. Copy Link I'm sure you've sat through plenty of presentations where the presenter starts with a polite salutation like, "Hello, thank ...